Wayfaring MD: Missionary Physician
I like to highlight the hilarious in medicine as I write about patients, medical school, residency, medical missions, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Oh yeah, and I like to use GIFs!
Disclaimer:
HIPAA is for reals, folks. All of my "patient stories" have been changed to protect patient privacy. I will change any or all identifiers, including age, location, race/ethnicity, sex, medical history, and quotes.
I got to help run the Volunteer Clinic today. I was paired up with a second year, and he and I would go find out the chief complaint of the patient and check vitals and heart and lung sounds. Then we had to present it to the doctor and then go back in with him for the exam. We saw 3 patients. The clinic was only from 9-12, and there were 3 doctors working, and we had a few no shows, so we didn’t get to see much. But it was fun.
Our first patient was coming in for a follow up. He “accidentally” shot himself while “cleaning his gun”. The docs have seen this guy a few times and they say the story keeps changing, so it prolly wasn’t a gun cleaning accident. Anyway, we got to see his healing bullet wound (it happened a little over a month ago), plus his x-rays, which were really cool because the bullet is still in his leg (along with a new rod). From the angle of the bullet, I don’t think his story checks out, but it could be true. You never know.
Our second patient was pretty boring—a 350 lb lady with—shocker—-hypertension.
Our third patient was a man with high cholesterol. The problem with him is that his liver functions are a little screwy, and so they can’t give him his cholesterol lowering meds. When the doc asked him if he drinks, he said yeah. When asked how much, the guy says, “oh, just 5 or 6 beers a day”. Scuse me? Just? The doc told him to cut back to 2 so they could give him his meds. If he can’t cut back, he’s got to go to rehab. And of course his 8 or 9 year old son is in the room with him to hear all this.
Basically, the main thing I learned today is that I’ve got to get more comfortable with patients. I tried to check BP and pulses on all of them, but for the first 2 I couldn’t hear the BP and my pulse counts were wrong (in my defense, the big lady had a really wacky heartbeat). But the third guy I got right. Actually, I realized that I was better at taking BP than the second year once I could actually hear through my stethoscope! But yeah, I’ve got to work on being comfortable with patients. I think I would be if there weren’t 2 other people in the room watching me.
All in all, it was a good morning. The pathologist that was volunteering to run the lab took us out to Ingleside for lunch, so I got free pizza. Sweet.
