Bring down the house.

New rotation, new enemies.

Now, I'm not saying I have enemies, per se, but let me just say:

Dear red-headed med student,
WE ARE NOT RETARDS.

I'm on rotation at RHUH, if you recall, in the SICU.  There are always a TON of people rounding with the SICU team.  Aside from the critical care attending, we have some interns, R2s and R3s from other specialties (right now, we have an anesthesiology R2, surgery R3 (I think), two ED R2s, and two interns - one from ENT, and one from anesthesiology), and an NP or two.  Then, we have myself, my classmate, and my preceptor.  And, as usual, since RHUH is a teaching institution, we have some fourth year med students from Really Huge University.

Now, I know med students don't know what we learn, and vise versa.  But what I do know (and I'm sure at some point I've ranted about this before) is that we spend 4 years of our lives learning about drugs - labeled uses, unlabeled uses, mechanism of action, side effects, kinetics, interactions, the list goes on.  When it comes to really important things, like life-threatening adverse reactions, we're pretty well-versed in those.

Our attending yesterday, who BTW, is a former pharmacist who decided to become a doctor and is super hilar and smart, ordered IV Haldol for a patient who was a little delirious.  As he walked back into the room to finish his exam of the patient, he turned to the NP who was writing orders during rounds and said, "Let's order some Haldol for this patient, but I want an EKG to check her QT interval first."  Red-headed med student turns to me and says, "You know why he wants to see an EKG, right?"

Nooooooooooo, Mr. God-Complex Med Student.  I'm just a dumb, retarded pharmacy student who went to school to learn about medications for 4 years of my life and I completely missed the fact that he said he wanted to check the QT interval.

For my non-pharmacy readers, or for pharmacy personnel/students who haven't heard of this yet, first generation antipsychotics, like Haldol, and basically cause an increase in the time between the Q and T waves on an EKG, which can essentially send a patient into a life-threatening arrhythmia.  That's why it's so important for the doc to check an EKG - he wouldn't have given the patient any Haldol if her QT interval was large to begin with.

So, Red-Headed Med Student, I'd appreciate the next time you think you know more than me, keep it to yourself, or else I might have to remind you that, when it comes to drugs, your 1 semester of pharmacology doesn't quite add up to my 4 years of training, just like I wouldn't presume to tell you why they are doing some type of diagnostic test on a patient.  We should both probably stick to what we know.  K, thx.

Anywho, our attending is pretty hilar, as I said.  At one point during rounds yesterday, he goes, "I'm a little hypo-Pringlemic.  It can be resolved with a can of Pringles.  Anyone got Pringles?"

Only three weeks to go before I get to go home foreverrrr!!  Weeeee!