My Greenness

It’s definitely been awhile since my last entry, but it’s been even longer since my last job. Technically this isn’t a “job”, it’s more like an unpaid internship, but hey, just pretend. So I’m at a family medicine clinic doing the whole 8-5 thing. I get to go in and take the patient’s history of present illness, past medical history, and even do a physical. On my first patients, I was literally shaking as I listened to their lung and cardiac sound I was so nervous and excited (I kept thinking oh boy this is happening). But I have never taken a history or done a physical unattended. Just because I have a stethoscope, they think I know what I’m doing, but the truth is… I probably couldn’t tell a murmur from a burp. The patients answer all my questions from illicit drug use (some do marijuana) to sexual history (some humped half of the east coast). I tell them to take off their clothes, they take off their clothes. I tell them to breathe, they breathe. I tell them to bend over; you get the idea. Sometimes I feel like there’s a game of deceit going on with the patients. I pretend like I’ve done something, even though I’ve never done it to show confidence, or else the patient might not let me do it (practice is crucial). For example, the other day I had to give a shot for migraines to a patient. The doctor told me to give the shot, she didn’t even ask the patient if that was ok. I had never given a shot before, but the patient didn’t know that. I had to show him I could do it. To calm myself down I went over the steps in my head. Take syringe, draw 2 ml air, then 2 ml of the ketorolac. Tap needle for bubbles, expel the air. Tell patient to expose his buttocks, alcohol swab it and go time. In a way I was glad it was in the glute because it would be harder for him to hit me if I messed up. When I went in for the kill, I didn’t go in quickly enough, so the needle penetrated the skin only slightly, then stopped. I had to jam harder to get it all the way in. That must have hurt. But he didn’t scream, or wince; he didn’t even complain. You know what he said? “Thank you.”

The very next patient, I had to give the same shot, but with the knowledge of my previous mistake etched in my mind, I gave her a flawless one. I really wanted to hi-five someone afterwards. There’s always someone you have to practice on, and then you subsequently learn from the previous experiences. Then hopefully, each time gets easier and easier. It’s just that the patients have no idea if they’re my first patient or my seventy first. For my third patient of the day, I had to give a PPD shot to test for tuberculosis. The patient was a college kid coming in for his physical and he asked me if I had given shots before. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Plenty of times.”