WEEK AS A MED STUDENT (emergency medicine).

Hello guys, and welcome to another vlog with me. This week is going to be super exciting because I'm starting my emergency medicine clerkship, which I'm super excited about because not a lot of medical students get to rotate through emergency medicine. And I kind of understand why. As a medical student, we go through these clerkships and we study the information that goes with that clerkship. So for instance, in OB, I learned about OB. Pediatrics, I learned about kids. Family medicine, I learned about guidelines, vaccines. And in internal medicine, I basically learned everything else. There isn't really anything that I don't already know from surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, just everything that emergency medicine is gonna teach me. At least stuff that's going to be on an exam. Emergency medicine is obviously its own beast as a practice, but the information that you have to learn, like abdominal pain, causes of shortness of breath, causes of dizziness, like that's all stuff I've learned before. But even still, our school allows us to rotate through the emergency room for one month. And tomorrow is my first shift. I will be doing a 12 hour shift with a ER nurse. I will be following a ER nurse so I can learn how to administer medication and all the other things that nurses do, which I'm not entirely sure what they do. So I'm really excited to find out and learn. Nurses have been basically everything for me for a medical student. They've taught me so much about everything that I know. So I'm very excited to actually get a full day to hang out with them. Hopefully they like me. I'll be sure to arrive on time and be super respectful. But yes, tomorrow is my first ER shift. I'm super, super excited because I love procedures. I love the energy and I love using my head and trying to figure out this mystery diagnosis. These are all things that I love, so I'm kind of super excited to start emergency medicine. I have not considered it as a profession at all or anything that I would be doing in the future, but I'm totally open to the idea that it could change my mind. However, it's gonna have to be really, really awesome to change my mind. So my step exam is coming up in little over a month. I might have to move it because I'm really, really nervous. I have to do super well on the exam. So I'm still reviewing OB. It's a lot easier the second time around to learn all of this, because even though I had OB maybe six months ago, a lot of this stuff sticks and a lot of this stuff stays pertinent even in surgery and IM. You still have to know a lot of things about women physiology. So it's just Calix, online med ed, and a full belly of Cheerios to carry me through the night. Finished watching my OB online med ed videos. It's 11.23 right now, so it's pretty late. I have to get up at six o'clock for a 12-hour shift, so I'm gonna go ahead and go to sleep so that I can be somewhat awake tomorrow. Good night, everybody, and see you in the morning. Alrighty, good morning, everybody. It is super, super early, and my eyes burn, but we are getting ready for a shift. I need to kind of keep up the energy. I'm going to wear a pretty bright lipstick. I'm gonna wear a new one every week. Okay, guys, I'm all ready to go. I will see you in the emergency room. Okay, guys, I am headed there now. Hopefully all goes well. Lunchbox. So tons and tons of food for this 12-hour shift. As long as I have food, I can do anything. So I think I'll be okay. Hello, everybody. So I am at the end of this 12-hour shift. How do you do 12-hour shifts? Oh, sorry, who is this? Introduce yourself. My name's Alex. And what are you? I'm an ER nurse here. What are you doing right now? Showing my super cool scissor. No, hello for a patient. I gotta make him comfortable. Why did you choose to be an RN? Oh, because I love helping people. I love face-to-face interactions. I love healing. Oh, nice. You like science? Oh, I love science, come on. And why emergency medicine? Oh, because I like to be the initial person. I like to be the first responder, especially here, this is a level one trauma center. So it's the best education you can get is being here. Awesome, any regrets? No, no regrets. Oh, what kind of stuff do you do throughout your day? Throughout my day? Yeah. I give meds. I restock stuff. I give patients pillows. I give interesting meds. I make sure people stay comfortable and make sure people stay happy. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Save lives, save lives. Draw lots of blood. Draw lots of, oh God, draw lots. Yes, draw lots of blood. We dropped an NG tube today. We did some Foley's. Foley's. And got a pillow at the end of our shift. So this is the most important part, it's the pillow. Gotta fluff it and get it right. All right, you guys. Okay, guys, it is seven o'clock. I finished my 12-hour shift, which it was actually super, super fun. I had a lot of fun hanging out with the nurses. Nurses have a really cool job. I was a little bit envious, actually, which I will get into in just one second. Let me just get out of the hospital. All right, thank you. Hey, guys. So just fast forward a week. So my nursing shift was a week ago, but I got a little bit busy. My nursing shift ended up being a lot more enlightening than I thought it was going to be. From a doctor's perspective, we put in orders. We see our patients like 30 minutes in the morning. Maybe we go check on them if something goes wrong. But for the most part, we kind of just stay in our offices coming up with plans, prescribing medications, and just giving the overall framework of the plan. And we press buttons and expect that patients just get the medications somehow that we prescribe. Get their x-rays, go to the CT scanners. That's where all the other health professionals kind of come in. We kind of make the plan of what we want to do, but then it's up to everybody else to actually do it. And although there's a lot of people involved in patient care, I finally got to see what it was like from a nurse's perspective, which was super interesting. First of all, nursing is the best of both worlds because the shift is long. It's like 12 hours, which is kind of on the long end of what a doctor's shift might or could be. This particular shift started at 7 a.m., where we had this little huddle, and new rules and regulations were taught to us. And then we went to our shift, and at 7 p.m., we just left. We told the next nurse what was happening, what our patients were doing, and then we left. And that's really awesome that nurses get to do that because they pick up where the last nurse came off, they do their shift, and then they go home. They just go home, which is so just bizarre to me because for a doctor to go home, we have like 25 patients on the emergency room unit. So to go home, we have to round for like an hour to get the other doctors caught up on what our plan is for every single patient and what we're doing. And then we have to finish writing all of our notes. But nurses, they just left. At 7 o'clock, they talked to the next nurse for like five minutes, and then they left. And that was really big to me because as soon as nurses leave, they can get back to their ordinary lives. As far as I know, they don't have to worry about being on call, they don't have to worry about the next nurse doing their job, answering questions or concerns from anybody, they just go home. So that's awesome. But not only that, during the whole shift, I am with patients, which is also bizarre to me because I'm so used to being in like an office on a computer, writing notes, putting in orders, and people calling me and answering phone calls. But nurses are actually, you know, they spend some time on the computer too because they do things like charting, although I'm still not really sure what that is. Their computer is usually right next to the patient's rooms. And on this particular day, we only had four rooms we had to take care of. Whereas the doctor team has to take care of the whole floor of patients in the emergency room. Every nurse gets about four patients in the emergency room that they are responsible for. Which is also awesome because that means every patient gets a good amount of direct care from the familiar face. That's also less people that you have to keep up with and less stressful, in my opinion. Not only do we spend so much time with patients because every time they have a question, need help, need a new pillow, we're right there. Nurses get to do a whole bunch of really cool procedures like NG2 placements, Foley placements and removals, lots of peripheral IVs, which I thought was really cool because I'm a big procedure person. I love to use my hands. So not only did you get to have so much one-on-one time with patients, get to do these fun procedures, but you also have shift work. So you go to work, you leave work and you're gone and you're home and you're enjoying your life and you're enjoying your family. So I can see how this particular career is very family oriented because as soon as you leave work, you can get back to being whoever you are when you're not at work. Super fun, super interesting and I have a way more respect for all of my nurses because I finally have a small understanding of the things that you guys do and all of the great work you do. Our patients, they like their doctors but they almost always are in love with their nurses. And of course they are because you guys spend the most time with them and most of y'all have amazing hearts and are in this for all of the right reasons. But as for me, if I would have gone into nursing school, I would have already been in my third year of practicing nursing, like actually having a job. But instead I'm still in school. Like I still don't have a job yet. I'm still in school. I have to get back to studying because I have a test. This is the life I chose. It's not the life a lot of people choose and I can see why but hey, somebody's got to do it. You guys, you are weird. Hey guys and welcome to another night with me. Tonight I am working in the night shift at the emergency room. Not just any emergency room, the pediatric emergency room. So I'm super excited to be, I don't know, in the action. I love working at the hospitals at night because it's just so different and so just like, ooh, anything can happen. All right guys, got the important things down. I'm dressed and have my lunch prepared for the long haul. So let's go to this eight hour overnight shift at pediatric emergency room. Okay guys, we're off to an amazing start because I got an excellent parking spot. So now we are just headed to work. Really excited, a little bit tired. It's almost 11 p.m. Okay guys, I will keep you updated when I come back. So goodbye. Had a lot of fun taking care of the little ones. I like kids a lot. I don't think I'd want to be a pediatrician but I actually really enjoy hanging out with kids and I'm kind of jealous that pediatricians and OB-GYNs get to hang out with babies and children and I probably won't ever but at least I get my few moments. Excellent day. We had a lot of interesting cases. A lot of children get viruses and come to the emergency room for type things like that. I think one of the hardest things about being an emergency room doctor is having to tell someone that you don't know what's wrong because I think a lot of people expect that if they go to the emergency room, you'll find out what's wrong because doctors will always find out what's wrong. But a lot of the time, I mean, like your kid comes in with a rash or like a runny nose and parents want to know like what virus or what bacteria or at least give me an antibiotic, make my trip to the emergency room and my huge bill that I'm gonna get worthwhile. There's the door and my car. It is one nice parking spot. But if the rash is benign, then it's not really going to hurt you and emergency rooms are all about fixing emergencies, right? They don't really have the funds, the time and the beds to treat every benign rash that they see. That's something that you should handle with your dermatologist. So whenever we see rashes, if it doesn't look like it's life-threatening, we tend to just tell patients, go on your merry way. And it's not just with rashes but just upper respiratory symptoms. It's an assortment of things that look benign. We could handle them, but we're not going to because we have people who are, you know, dying and we have people who are very, very ill and we kind of need them to get like a bed. And so when I have to go in a room and tell a patient, okay, yeah, your son or your daughter has diarrhea and we could try to find out what bacteria is causing the diarrhea and we could potentially prescribe you antibiotics. But the truth is, is that this is probably just a virus and we're probably not going to find anything and there's really nothing we can do for your diarrhea anyway so just, you know, drink fluids, go home, come back if it gets a lot worse. And having to tell parents that, I'm sorry that you came here, maybe you think you've wasted your time by coming here but there's really nothing that we can do. It really saddens me because I've been the patient in these situations where I go to doctors and I come to them with symptoms and they don't know what's wrong with me and they just tell me, I don't think it's anything serious, go home. It's bothersome because these symptoms are real to me and they bother me. So having my symptoms belittled in that way is very annoying. So I hate doing that to patients but it's not because we don't want to take care of you and it's not because we don't think your symptoms are real. It's just that your symptoms aren't an emergency and they can be handled by someone like not in an ER or not in an urgent care clinic. They can be handled by your PCP. I am a little bit tired right now. I haven't really slept in over 24 hours so I'm gonna go home, sleep. Well, I've got to finish a few URL questions, like five left, then go to sleep and do this all over again tomorrow because I have two more night shifts and you're coming with me. So let's go home. Completely clear skies right now. I mean, completely blue, sunny day at the end of my night shift. Gotta love the night shift. What a beautiful day to just sleep entirely away. Honestly, like what's the point of working night shifts as a medical student? Like what am I learning from this? Am I learning stamina? First thing I do when I get home is take care of the important things. Come here. Give Calix giant hugs. This is automatic stress relief for me. I kind of like to think that Calix likes it. Afternoon, guys. Just continuing this never-ending saga of watching online Med Ed videos and doing URL questions. We know that one egg gets fertilized by one sperm. Okay, guys, so very quick snack idea for all of my fans out there. Every time I eat a semblance of junk food on my YouTube channel, I get a lot of hate. So I'm going to teach y'all how to make a very healthy snack that you can use while you study, and this is for everybody, including my vegan fans. I'm going to teach you how to make avocado toast. And so all you need is toast or bread. I use wheat bread and some avocados with some salt. You can get fancy and use limes and nuts and drizzles with fat, but this is just the standard way. So first you need toast. Everybody loves toast. And some fun little avocados. Mash up your avocados in a separate dish so that you can peacefully layer it. Toast is such a funny word. I feel like that would be a really good name for a pet. Add some salt, oops, helps that it's open. My blood pressure tends to run pretty low, so I'm a lot more lenient with my salt. Apply it with a knife, and there you go. Some fantastic avocado toast. Me too, Calyx, me too. All right, guys, I am ready for my next emergency medicine overnight shift. Today we are at the mild trauma area, so nothing crazy. I don't know if it's gonna be busy. It wasn't really busy in the pediatric unit yesterday, but everybody above the age of 18 will come see me, so that's gonna be a lot more people. Working on a Saturday night. Not at all salty about it. And of course it is daytime. What a great time to go to sleep. I had a very good day, or good night, at the emergency department. We were very, very busy. We had patients coming in and coming out, coming in, coming out all night long. One of my favorite things to do in the emergency room is the laceration repairs and the procedural part of all of it. I like the medicine part, interviewing patients, all good, but I think my favorite part is definitely the procedures, which reminds me that that's kind of where I want my career to go in that direction. I wanna pick a career that is heavy in procedure. Just woke up next to some 30 prolines. Emergency medicine problems. Okay, guys, current setup. Watching some online med ed videos. It is 9.52, so just a little bit more time before I have to leave, and it's Kalix and I and the rain, which is always fun, because I love rain. So I opened up the windows, so I was able to look outside and calm down. Also, think about the fact that I have to drive through that in a couple hours. You should enjoy every aspect of life, even these hard times like the era before step exams. I'm trying my best to take it all in and enjoy every second with the rain, with Kalix, oop, where is he? There he is, and with y'all. So just watching a few more online med ed videos and then going to work for eight hours. Good heavens. This benign rain has turned a little bit frightening. Oh my gosh. Crazy shift. All right, guys, finally back home after this long shift and ready to call it a night. Kalix, what about you? Are you ready? Oh, goodness. So I just came back from volunteering at the women's shelter, and it was super fun. I had a great time, but now I have to get back to doing other important things like studying and cleaning this white coat that I haven't cleaned in so long, but really needs to be cleaned. So I'm just gonna remove the things from my pockets. I have a marker, pens, what else? I have some 3O proline, fluorohexidine wipes, lube, my name tag, my stethoscope, Kalix. I keep them in my pocket. A book, some scissors, 25 gauge needle, boroethalon, but yes, this has been a little dingy. Could use some cleaning so that I look presentable for my patients. Okay, guys, it's another late night study session with me. Got some candles going on, some hydration, a smoothie, and some veggie burgers that look amazing. I finished all of my online Med Ed videos, so it's just time to do nonstop Uworld. At least no one can say I'm average. All right, guys, so I just finished a night of studying. It is pretty late, but I am not tired at all because I've been working home with a night shift, but I will go ahead and try to go to sleep in a bit. All right, let's go to school, guys. Lunch break. So today's been pretty busy. We've seen lots of different types of things. All right, needs to calm down. PowerAid, Ion Advanced Electrolyte System. Shut up, PowerAid, it's just some four salts you threw into some sugar water and dyed it red. I think that's my fifth sip. I think that means I have to go back to work. Well, that was a pleasant lunch break. Can't help but feel like my residents are waiting on me to return, so. Even though that I'm pretty sure my residents haven't even noticed I've left, let alone could pick me out of a suspect lineup. When you feel like you've been doing Uworld literally all day and you look at how many questions you have left. So I did one and I have the rest of these 40 to go. Thank you guys so much for watching this vlog about emergency medicine. Hopefully it answered all your questions. Thank you for coming with me on this journey and I will see you in my next video. Goodbye, everybody.