Today was filled with some wonderful, new experiences. The morning was a typical morning with one case that stuck out to me. We had a child come in with a dog bite. He had been bitten the previous day by an unknown dog. Despite having cleaned the wound at the time of the accident he presented early this morning with signs the infection had spread. Dr. Seidel promptly extracted puss from the wound to culture. She applied some topical antibiotic to the cut and bandaged it for the day. She also prescribed an oral medication for the infection and another antibiotic cream to help. With all this; however, she doesn’t feel that they were able to treat the cut fast enough. Because the cut was in the thenar area of his hand, the infection will spread quickly. As a result he is due to come back in tomorrow for reevaluation but, Dr. Seidel says chances he will have to be sent somewhere else to treat it are high. Check back tomorrow for an update!
My afternoon provided a bit of a different experience. I spent the majority of my afternoon with two nurses, Hayley and JJ. We were on the phones answering calls from parents and returning messages the doctors had left for patients. It was a very fun experience. Because you are always on the side of giving the call not receiving you never realize how much these nurses have to put up with on the phone. Especially in a pediatric office where they are seeing worried parents and non native speakers over the phone it can be very difficult. JJ and Hayley were great role models on how to handle the situation. They were always calm and collected on the phone and never showed frustration to the caller. They also provided as much information as they could to any question asked. Overall I was very impressed on how the answering of phones work and the communication system between the nurses on phones and doctors. They communicate through a portal in their database where they area able to send messages back and forth so the nurses can call parents and relay information to them. Thank you for the fun and new experiences today and I can’t wait to see what my final day holds!
image from google – the purple highlighted area is the part of the palm that was bitten (thenar area)