Friday, March 20, 2009

bagged & intubated


Our Friday classes now consist of three hours of learning clinical procedures that we will hopefully perfect next year in rotations, but for now we just practice on one another and get our mistakes out of the way!
We started with venupuncture (or blood draws) as well as finger pricks, EKG placements, and arterial lines. Moving through a week of practicing injections of normal saline into muscle, subcutaneous tissue, and into other areas was a lot of fun! We will definitely perfect this skill in our pediatric rotation - kids need immunizations!

THIS WEEK THOUGH... we topped it all off learning how to put in an endotracheal tube for intubation! Unfortunately we didn't practice this on each other... but we did practice on models of infants, children, and adults. It takes a lot more force to move the tongue and position the tongue blade to visualize the vocal cords, but you could feel your adrenaline rush starting up the second you assembled the materials and placed the head in the right position. As awful as this sounds, I cannot wait to intubate my first patient!! With a small interest in trauma, I'm excited to just work off of adrenaline and not have to think twice about what I am doing.

One more step towards saving a life!!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

less than 3 months... 80 days to be exact!!

ROTATION SCHEDULES CAME OUT!!!!
Tentatively here's the gameplan come June 1st!

1st up - FAMILY MEDICINE
2nd - SURGERY @ Northshore Hospital in Evanston (very excited about this)
3rd - Women's Health @ Alston in Chicago
4th - Internal Medicine in Arlington Heights, IL
5th - Emergency Medicine at Mt. Sinai in Chicago (also very excited about this)
6th - HILLSIDE HEALTH CARE INTL IN PUNTA GORDA, BELIZE!!!!! (Have you heard?)
7th - to be determined - possibly my pediatric rotation or my last elective
8th - to be determined - possibly my pediatric rotation or my last elective

THEN BOARDS!
Then I can save your life... well that's my end-all goal!

More information to come.... and it's all still very tentative possibly!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Only fate will tell..



I think it may be a sign...
Check out the homepage as well - http://www.eddiebauer.com/home.jsp.

Although my Belize trip will not require me to be decked out safari style, it's kind of interesting how they portray a "outfit fit for Belize". I'll be in scrubs during the week and casual lay-low, stay cool gear all weekend for any excursions we run off on. You won't find binoculars hanging from my neck or a safari hat shading my face!

But it's all still about Belize!! :)

Thursday, March 5, 2009

kate down under


Hillside Health Care International..
I'll be here (http://www.hillsidebelize.net/) for four weeks in January 2010!

CDC suggests many precautions.. 1:40 adults have HIV/AIDS (yikes!). Thank goodness for universal precautions!!

And to feel like a local, check out everything you could want to know about Belize!
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bh.html

SOOOOOooo EXCITED! :)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

So... welcome!
This is my attempt at one, staying in contact with people despite the crazy mess of a schedule of PA school and two, to document all the fun and madness of rotations! Drop a line, say hello, or just kick back and enjoy a little update from me!

And ps. for all of you wondering... andiamo means "let's go" in Italian. Kind of fits huh?