clinic – CA Work Experience Program

Today was unfortunately my last day of the Work Experience Program, but it was one of my favorites. It was just a regular day in the Cary Clinic with Dr. Logel, but it was my first day that Dr. Logel had me really help out with the patients. Dr. Logel’s PA had recently moved, so I acted as a bit of his assistant today!

The main thing that I did today was help with cortisone injections. Cortisone injections are steroids that are injected into a joint to help decrease inflammation and pain. However, these injections can be very painful, so it was my task to spray the injection area with numbing spray before Dr. Logel injected the patient. The first patient that I saw, a dancer with the Washington Ballet Company, said that I did such a good job with the numbing spray that she didn’t even feel the needle going into her skin! Luckily, Dr. Logel was pleased with my spraying skills and let me help out with two more patients! This was an unusual amount of cortisone injections in one day at the clinic, but I am very glad they all came in today, so I could get some hands-on experience!

The second thing that I helped out with today was with a patient who had back surgery that caused her to have drop foot and minimal sensation in her foot. This means that she wasn’t able to lift her foot and couldn’t feel much in her foot. Because of this, she easily twisted her ankle on stairs and broke big sections off of her bone. Dr. Logel knew he needed to do surgery, but based on her x-rays, you could see big blisters on the side of her ankle, so he wouldn’t be able to do the procedure. He took the splint off her leg, and her whole foot and ankle were swollen, badly bruised, and full of big, bloody blisters (and I’m talking multiple inches wide and long blisters). I got to watch Dr. Logel drain all of the blood out of her legs which was really gross, but cool to watch. Then I helped with the rewrapping process; I unwrapped all of the padding and bandages for Dr. Logel so things would run more smoothly, and even though I wasn’t doing much, I felt like I was really apart of the patient’s case, rather than just watching it.

Overall, the Work Experience Program was a great way for me to see what I am and am not interested in and I learned so much more than I expected!

Today I was back in the clinic, but in a new office! It was just Dr. Logel in the office today, so things ran much smoother. I was there from 8 to 4:30 and probably saw close to 40 patients. My favorite thing that I saw today was a patient that came in who said that her third toe was constantly numb. This is called neuropathy, where a nerve in between the toes is swollen and causes the toe to go numb. The cure to neuropathy is to surgically remove the nerve in between the toes, but this patient was not to the point of wanting the surgery. However, later in the day, another patient came in who had actually recently had this nerve removal surgery, so I got to see the effects of it. With this surgery, your toe is permanently numb, but any pain that was there is gone, as you can’t feel anything. She was saying how it felt as if she was walking on rocks though, as she had just recently had the surgery and some of the branching nerves were still confused as to where their main nerve went. On the topic of numbness, a rare case came in where the patients whole foot has been numb for 7 years since he had a ruptured achilles’ tendon repair in 2012. Dr. Logel was bewildered by this case as there was no definitive answer to his problems and the only thing to do was just live with it. Besides having abnormally numb patients today, I also saw many broken ankles, hurt achilles’ tendons, and even two casts. It was cool to stay and see the whole day with Dr. Logel and I was able to start and put bits and pieces of my knowledge together!

Tag: clinic

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