A&E: Day One

Sorry for my lack of posts recently I've been putting a bit of time into preparation for my new placement. I am now spending eight weeks on Accident and Emergency. This is very much where I want to be career wise.

For my first day I was working majors. This is where patients go if they have a serious injury or illness and will probably require inpatient admission. My first patient was a known alcoholic in his mid-fourties who was found in the middle of a road unconcious with some very nasty grazes down his arm. Grazes dont sound that bad however he was losing about a pint of serous fluid(clear body fluid) every few minutes. He had taken most of the layers of skin off his. Obviously the key here was to dress the wound and get as much saline into him as humanly possible, we also gave him various vitamins to ease the effects of the alcohol withdrawl. All in all a really good first patient.

We also had a couple of road-traffic collisions(RTC's) one of whom was triple-immobilised by the ambulance crew(neck colar, head blocks and straps all over hte body). We had to get an x-ray of his c-spine before we could remove any of this. This shouldnt be too hard but we are fairly sure he dislocated his shoulder as well so it was damn near impossible to get a clear picture of the last cervical(that spelling doesnt look right but my brain is melting so it will do) vertibrae.

All in all an exciting first day.