And now for a word from our sponsor...
Hail all,
I will try and find out what the Saudi reg said to the nurse after "The trouble with you Australian women". I think my mind sortof stopped after the first few words of that sentence and refused to process it. I think it was something about knowing their place.
Gloriously slack afternoon in the prisons on Wednesday, with my young, keen and knowledgeable RMO doing all the work (he's still at that stage where peering up someone's blocked nose excites him), while I surf the net for other jobs for next year. This is my other RMO, the normal one.
Plan A, which was to work at Lazarus, has fallen through. They have troubles of their own. And so I am faced with a number of options: a year of paediatrics at Florey, a year of Psych at Shipton, a year of paediatrics at the Princess (the sister hospital to the Royal, but specialising in the more unmanly branches of medicine - women and children). Paeds at Florey would be close. The Princess would be educational. Psych would be easy, so I could study for my exams.
I don't bloody know, I'm sick of thinking about it. Maybe I could go back to my first job, swineherding.
That's actually true. Swineherding, which meant working for a little over two dollars an hour, in the West Australian mid-summer, wearing boots and overalls, in an intensive piggery. Even now the smell of a piggery brings back unpleasant memories - although I suspect for the majority of people the smell of a piggery is not the bracing of odours. I try not to remember the horror that followed when one of the big sows 'escaped' into the sewers, and the "new kid" had to go in and wrestle it out. A large pig with the taste of freedom can easily drag a teenage boy for several hundred feet, even through a sewer. I have never gone waterskiing since.
After that, going door to door selling crackpot religion or circuit breakers was comparatively easy.
Anyway, on the telly recently was one of those "Our Health System In Crisis" stories. Apparently interns are beng rostered onto the cardiac ICU and cardiac stepdown units (i.e.: the wards for during and after your heart attack) in relatively senior positions. This means that people can step out of medical school and start looking after people who've had heart attacks.
I think that the medical establishment, rather than seeing this as a negative, should work with it to extract some good. They should use this as the basis for the next anti-smoking campaign.
Midrange shot: Brad, skinny, confused, awkward-looking, wearing a lab coat, clutching two cardiac paddles.
Voice-over: This is Brad.
Shot: Brad grins uncertainly
Voiceover: Brad is progressing well in reading the ECG
Shot: Brad pointing at significant point on ECG and confidently explaining cardiac pathology to senior. Senior reaches out, turns ECG right side up, allows Brad to continue.
VO: Brad now knows which side of the body the heart is on six times out of ten!
Shot: Brad nods, pauses, nods more certainly.
VO: Brad knows it's important to stay alert through his eighteen hour shifts. So he lives on amphetamine-coated coffee beans and caffeine nasal spray.
Shot: Brad, looking slightly blurry, as if vibrating at an impossibly high frequency.
VO: He's certainly come a long way since medical school, two weeks ago.
Shot: Brad half-naked in a wheelbarrow, genitals covered in shaving cream, during the post-graduation bacchanale, smiling emptily, and clutching a bottle of Jack's.
VO: And that's good, because Brad's on call for the cardiac ward for the next three days straight. He'll be the only thing between your fat-clogged, stuttering heart and oblivion.
Shot: Brad holding buzzing cardiac paddles. One gives off a small spark. Brad twitches visibly.
Text: Stop Smoking Today. For your own safety. Believe us, we know.
This message brought to you by the medical defence fund.
Well, it might work. I've always wanted to have one where we show a ward and there's doctors rushing around trying madly (and unsuccessfully) to save Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man and so on.
Anyway, thanks for listening.
John
I will try and find out what the Saudi reg said to the nurse after "The trouble with you Australian women". I think my mind sortof stopped after the first few words of that sentence and refused to process it. I think it was something about knowing their place.
Gloriously slack afternoon in the prisons on Wednesday, with my young, keen and knowledgeable RMO doing all the work (he's still at that stage where peering up someone's blocked nose excites him), while I surf the net for other jobs for next year. This is my other RMO, the normal one.
Plan A, which was to work at Lazarus, has fallen through. They have troubles of their own. And so I am faced with a number of options: a year of paediatrics at Florey, a year of Psych at Shipton, a year of paediatrics at the Princess (the sister hospital to the Royal, but specialising in the more unmanly branches of medicine - women and children). Paeds at Florey would be close. The Princess would be educational. Psych would be easy, so I could study for my exams.
I don't bloody know, I'm sick of thinking about it. Maybe I could go back to my first job, swineherding.
That's actually true. Swineherding, which meant working for a little over two dollars an hour, in the West Australian mid-summer, wearing boots and overalls, in an intensive piggery. Even now the smell of a piggery brings back unpleasant memories - although I suspect for the majority of people the smell of a piggery is not the bracing of odours. I try not to remember the horror that followed when one of the big sows 'escaped' into the sewers, and the "new kid" had to go in and wrestle it out. A large pig with the taste of freedom can easily drag a teenage boy for several hundred feet, even through a sewer. I have never gone waterskiing since.
After that, going door to door selling crackpot religion or circuit breakers was comparatively easy.
Anyway, on the telly recently was one of those "Our Health System In Crisis" stories. Apparently interns are beng rostered onto the cardiac ICU and cardiac stepdown units (i.e.: the wards for during and after your heart attack) in relatively senior positions. This means that people can step out of medical school and start looking after people who've had heart attacks.
I think that the medical establishment, rather than seeing this as a negative, should work with it to extract some good. They should use this as the basis for the next anti-smoking campaign.
Midrange shot: Brad, skinny, confused, awkward-looking, wearing a lab coat, clutching two cardiac paddles.
Voice-over: This is Brad.
Shot: Brad grins uncertainly
Voiceover: Brad is progressing well in reading the ECG
Shot: Brad pointing at significant point on ECG and confidently explaining cardiac pathology to senior. Senior reaches out, turns ECG right side up, allows Brad to continue.
VO: Brad now knows which side of the body the heart is on six times out of ten!
Shot: Brad nods, pauses, nods more certainly.
VO: Brad knows it's important to stay alert through his eighteen hour shifts. So he lives on amphetamine-coated coffee beans and caffeine nasal spray.
Shot: Brad, looking slightly blurry, as if vibrating at an impossibly high frequency.
VO: He's certainly come a long way since medical school, two weeks ago.
Shot: Brad half-naked in a wheelbarrow, genitals covered in shaving cream, during the post-graduation bacchanale, smiling emptily, and clutching a bottle of Jack's.
VO: And that's good, because Brad's on call for the cardiac ward for the next three days straight. He'll be the only thing between your fat-clogged, stuttering heart and oblivion.
Shot: Brad holding buzzing cardiac paddles. One gives off a small spark. Brad twitches visibly.
Text: Stop Smoking Today. For your own safety. Believe us, we know.
This message brought to you by the medical defence fund.
Well, it might work. I've always wanted to have one where we show a ward and there's doctors rushing around trying madly (and unsuccessfully) to save Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man and so on.
Anyway, thanks for listening.
John
posted by Bronze John at 2:33 PM
6 Comments:
I think Brad was the resident who assisted the attending physician when I delivered my first. In the middle of a contraction, I hit him. He flinched. Once I had my bearings again, I asked him when he had started working. When he said "10 am yesterday" I asked the attending to get me someone better rested if that person was going to be having anything to do with any sharp objects anywhere near that area of my body or my baby. She had a nice, wide awake resident brought in.
Foilwoman sent me. GREAT commercial idea! I love it!!
That was so hilarious. I think that it would be great. I would love to see that on my TV. Great listing of jobs too. Thanks for the giggles.
cough!
Actually Dr Maad sounds quite benign compared to the father of these four who jailed for gang rape a GP in Sydney, who, when watching security film of one son raping an unconcious underage female apparently said "He would make a good gynaecologist one day".
I do not understand how this could be related to Islam. A sister-in-law's sister worked on some archeological digs in Turkey a couple of years ago and she thought of going to Greece for a holiday, and her Turkish friends wouldn't let her as she wouldn't be safe over there. She never felt safer than when working in Turkey!
Back to the anti-smoking message...
And BJ - remember Mrs Cheesecake, day 3 of our internship. Her last words when she started getting breathless from the fast AF still haunt me: "I am glad I am in hospital, I feel safe here"
I see your team did well again this week!
Too bad about mine!
Your Holiness: It is now time to start your own blog and elaborate a bit about "Mrs. Cheesecake" (an ominous nickname if I ever read one).
So funny and true!
My other tactic for getting men to stop smoking/watch their blood sugar/ take their antihypertensives is to mention impotence. Of course, viagra and its buddies are taking the punch out of that point.
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