Pulm: ICU time

This week Dr. Ozzie and I were joined by an FP intern, Andrea, who was doing her ICU rotation and would be with us for a week. Dr. Ozzie had originally scheduled a lecture on hemodynamic shock next week, but he moved it to this afternoon so that Andrea could hear the lecture, too. It fell on me to contact the other four to let them know of this sudden change in plans. All of us were present at noon for the shock lecture, and much to my dismay when we were going over the basics of shock I started spouting off wrong answers. *sigh* Not the best way to impress the attending.

Dr. Ozzie got 3-4 new admits, including one in the ICU, so after giving a lecture on mechanical ventilation he emphasized that he expected Andrea and me to really know our stuff. I saw two of the patients: one really nice 85-year-old lady with a lower lobe pneumonia and an equally pleasant 66-year-old guy with a COPD exacerbation and MRSA. After that Dr. Ozzie met up with me and asked me what orders I wanted to write for the patients. Wow, he really is trying to get me prepped for residency! Not that I minded; I don't want to be a total idiot when I start residency. I also spent an afternoon at the PFT lab to see PFTs done (it was assigned to us; I'd already seen PFT testing back at Baylor). The first patient was a girl with CF who knew exactly what to do (she'd had tons of PFTs in the past); without anyone telling her, she took the apparatus and blew into it. And when the tech told her what her FEV1 and other values were, she looked happy. "See, that's better than last week!" she said to her mom. The second patient I saw was a really healthy 85-year-old lady who had some trouble with the apparatus at first but eventually figured it out. I'm amazed by how generally healthy the elderly population in East Texas is; yesterday in clinic I saw a couple in their 80s who went country line dancing on a weekly basis. I hope I'm in that good shape if I live be that old.