I'm no Superman

I (appropriately, considering the circumstances) rewatched the first episode of Scrubs. The one where JD starts his internship and realizes that after 4 years of med school, he still doesn't know crap. I laughed then at the absurdity. I laugh now at the irony. And the scary thing is, there are thousands of us interns.

The triage nurse understands this (this being my incompetence, and near misses with incontinence), and so she distributes patients accordingly. First patient I saw today: deaf. Earwax was clogging his ears. On the up side, I figured this out even before looking in his ears (he told me he could hear himself talk just fine, but couldn't hear others at all. Saved me the trouble of doing a Rinne test myself). Kobe! On the down side, it took me almost 45 minutes to figure out all the charting that had to be done. Also, I don't actually know how to remove earwax, so I referred him to ENT. I think they use miniature shovels. I wonder if they also have small rakes, and hoes, and flower beds. They probably keep ear gardens.

Thanks for your referral, we only treat healthy patients

Today we tried to arrange for some Occupational Therapy for a lady with weakness in the median nerve distribution.

OT said they wouldn't take her until she had regained full nerve function.

"Wouldn't she benefit from fine motor exercises to help her regain that function?"

"No, it's like turning up the volume on a radio that's not even plugged in. She needs to have regained FULL FUNCTION with 5/5 strength before we can start working with her."

They must see a lot of patients referred for a chief complaint of "full strength and function".

Today I paid for Step 2 CS.

I am MD.

Dr. M, vascular surgeon: (pointing): Ming, do you see the artery pulsating?

Ming: ...............no.

Dr. M: what?? it's right HERE!

Ming: ...............sorry.

Dr. M: well at least we've learned 2 things today - a) you're honest, and b) you're blind.

psych attending quote:
"that kid's acne is so bad it hurts me. I mean I can only stand there so long looking at him..."

2 minutes later in the middle of discussing another patient he silently gets up and leaves...that's how our rounds ended for the day.

Doctor T: so you have an ulcer in your stomach, have you had it for a while?

Patient: oh I know when I got it - when I got married.

Where was the Scrub Nurse??

As I was on my anesthesia rotation, I was watching a 3rd year Anesthesia Resident extubate a young patient after surgery. The patient was successfully extubated and as the resident was deep suctioning the patient, he dropped the suction on the ground... right next to his shoe (that did not have a shoe cover!).... He then proceeded to pick up the suction and went right back to deep suctioning.
ewwwww

Shhhh.....

Patient: pointing to stethoscope: hey do you ever use that thing to listen to stuff that...well...stuff you aren't normally supposed to listen to?

Me: ....like what?

Patient: you know, like to listen to people...through walls and stuff.

Me: no, sir, I have not.

Patient: how much does one of them cost?