RRC in the ICU

The other student I'm with seems to be enjoying this rotation. I on the other hand am dying. It reminds me so much of my time on vascular surgery, the rotation that convinced me that I wanted nothing to do with surgery. It's criminal what we do to people. I can think of no greater humiliation than dying with a foley and a rectal tube, a decubitus sacral ulcer, and some med student breaking my ribs doing compressions while the intern warms up the defibrillator.

The ICU is not the real world. That is what bothers me the most about it. Everything that happens in the ICU is like medicine practiced on crystal meth. It's the last 30 seconds of a basketball game played for the whole game. It's a hockey game that's 60 minutes of power play. I can't get into it. I can't appreciate it.

I did the math and for an ICU rotation, the residents are actually doing pretty okay. It's not q3 overnight call. There's more than one intern covering a service. Caps are enforced. So when residents complain, I'm just not sympathetic anymore. Medicine isn't supposed to be easy. It's hard. And ICU is the hardest. At some point, you've got to say that there's a limit.

A lot of people in my class are going into radiology and emergency and other fields that are basically shift work, and it depresses me. Medicine should not be a job. It's a profession. Mechanic is a job. Electrician is a job. Plumber is a job. Medicine is a profession, and that means something. It's ridiculous to ask someone to work 80 hours a week, but life can be pretty ridiculous.

You do what you have to do. I've never left the building without updating my patients on the list. That's simply being responsible. Today, my senior told me to go home, and an hour later, I was still there. I could've just left, but I refuse to leave the hospital without doing what I was supposed to do. It's my responsibility, and if I expect to be taken seriously, I have to act serious.

My senior has been sending the interns home early recently, and while I'm sure I'd be thankful if I was an intern, I'd also resent it somewhat. When you're on a team, you work as a team. That's the way teams work. You don't see a pitcher in baseball happy to be taken out of the game.

It's tough to put into words what I'm trying to say, so I'll stop here, and note that I had a successful radial stick for ABG today. Nice.