We were required to do one month of inpatient internal medicine. As you can probably guess, this was a VERY unpopular month for OB.
I got lucky - my month was February - shortest month, which meant one less call night of medicine. My team consisted of an awesome attending, a great resident, a FP intern who had a family emergency mid-month and left the service, and last (at certainly least) a medicine intern who wasn't competent to count her fingers, much less care for patients. Our resident had her hands full dealing with her daily fuck-ups.
So after the FP guy left, I got his load and mine. Plus extra call (should have taught me to gloat to the other interns in my class that I got the best month). The resident decided that on weekends the other intern and I would each take one day. I would always round with the attending, and the other intern would round with both the resident and the attending. So one weekend, I was rounding with the attending. We had a patient with some electrolyte abnormalities...his mag was low. And we were discussing replacement. The attending looked at me and asked "Do you know how to dose mag?"
I looked right back at him and said "The way I give it would give YOU a coronary! But yes, I'm comfortable giving mag."
He just laughed and put that order in the chart. He was awesome - he rounded on 2/3 of the patients and wrote the stupid notes himself because he saw the load I was trying to do.
5 comments:
Love the story
Yep! 4 gram load over 20 minutes, 2 grams/hr maintenance. Would definitely give the internal medicine attending/resident a coronary.
As a nurse who was accustomed to working cardiology, I kind of freaked out when given mag for preterm labor, especially for a few weeks at a time.
4 grams!! I thought for sure I was going to die. I even refused the Procardia with the first child due to issues related to knowledge from work.
With the first child, I didn't get mag sick, but with the 2nd- I sort of did, then really did with my post-partum preeclampsia. yuck!
"The way I give it would give YOU a coronary! But yes, I'm comfortable giving mag."
Wow! You could give a mag, and still comfortable doing it. Not all nurses are comfortable with it, eh. Great! :)
Happy Birthday to your daughter! Hope it's a great one!
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