ER, In Reality

Emergency medicine, the branch of medicine soaked in adrenaline, as is so often dramatized on various TV shows, is in reality much more subdued and mundane. With so many patients coming in with little cuts and coughs and general non-emergencies, you’d actually hope for the chaos as depicted in ER. 

So, in search of some excitement, I took up the recommendation by the head nurse and did an overnight shift last night. Friday night is normally referred to as “suture night” due to the hordes of drunken people getting into fights and cutting themselves on various sharp and not-so-sharp objects. And more drunken people also mean more car crashes. So I put on my white coat – medical students are required to wear a white coat in the emergency department so we are easily identified, none of the real doctors wears one. Ironic, isn’t it? – and headed to emergency at 10 p.m. on a Friday night.

“That’s really sad – it’s Friday night and you’re here,” was the first thing the consultant told me as I introduced myself. Okay, so no acknowledgement that a medical student was sacrificing his Friday night in the name of learning. Fine, I am a loser with nothing else better to do than studying on a Friday night. So be it.

The night didn’t hold much promise, as it turned out. Customers trickled in with falls and chest pains that turned out to be nothing major. A couple of category 2 calls to the resuscitation bays were also non-events. Two o’clock rolled around, I stood in front of the list of patients waiting outside, trying to pick one to see. “Cat 2 resus 4,” the overhead speakers crackled. I walked over to the resuscitation bay to investigate. “Eighteen-year-old female was stabbed at a party,” the paramedic announced. While the doctors were assessing her, I volunteered to put in a cannula in the patient’s arm. She was a thin young girl, her veins were probably tiny. I wanted a challenge and see if I could put in a big cannula in a difficult patient. Stabbing victims could lose a lot of blood, so large bore cannulas are often necessary. I flipped her arm over and a big fat vein just stared at me in the face. Ha! Too easy! I grabbed the eighteen-gauge cannula and quickly shoved it into the vein while she was talking to the doctor.

While checking her over for serious bleeds and finding none, the noise of someone screaming obscenities on top of his lungs pierced the hushed air. Five security guards were holding a young man down on the trolley. It turned out that he was one of the patients in the secured unit where prisoners are treated. The doctors on duty turned their attention to him and tried to find out why he was so agitated. They maneuvered him into a room and closed the door. Cursing and the noise of the patient thrashing around easily penetrated the thin walls. After twenty minutes or so, the patient wore himself out and decided to stop.

So that was as close to drama as the emergency department got last night. Maybe I was unlucky to have picked last night to come in, or maybe people in the southside of Brisbane were extra lucky last night. I guess I should be glad that nothing major happened, for the people’s sake.

At around 4:30 a.m., as the emergency department went back to a lull, I was told that I should go home.