Old stories

This happened when I was a lowly 3rd year medical student, doing my infernal medicine rotation (2 VEEEERRRRRYYYYY long months).

So on your team was 2-3 med students, 2-3 interns, 1 resident and the attending. There were 4 teams, so we took call Q4. When it was your call day, you would take "The call pager", which was the code blue pager. If it went off, you went running to the room it was announcing.

We had weekly lectures. Med students were in one conference room, interns and residents in another. Now these room were blocks apart, since this was a HUGE hospital - think several city blocks long.

So Allison and I were at the students' lecture when the pager started to squawk "Code Blue, Room 303. Code Blue, Room 303." We both just looked at each other and the rest of the med students were saying "GO!"

Remember when I said this was a huge hospital. OUR lecture room was a couple of steps from the wing where Room 303 was. The residents were a good half mile away in their lecture. But being the good students, we arrive to room 303.

The PM&R doctor was there. He saw the 2 of us walk in and you could see the relief hit his face - "Thank-goodness you're here."

Then I piped up "I'm a med student." The panic returned to his face.

Allison and I at least figured out the "A" of the "ABCs" when the real rescuers arrived.

I ended up doing nothing much except staying out of people's way. 3rd year students are great at getting in the way.