Sunday, 5 April 2009

The Mental Consultant

No he was not a psychiatric consultant. The man is just crazy.

He showed up when I was in the middle of ten other things and demanding that I attend his ward round one morning.

He had 8 patients on my ward and when we got to patient number 3 I heard the strangest clicking sound coming from across the ward. I looked over to see where the sound was coming from.

I saw a 30 something known epileptic patient having a massive seizure. If you have never seen something like this it is indeed scary. I have seen many and still find it tough. It has been awhile and I felt very scared and less than confident.

The clanking sound I heard was his teeth hitting the siderail as he was seizing. He also looked a bit blue.

His RN was all the way down the other end of the ward on the phone with abusive demanding relatives. There were 2 of us for 28 patients that day. I knew all about my 14 and the other RN had his 14 that I barely knew. I dropped the ward round consultant like a hot potato and ran over to the seizing patient. I was yelling for the HCA to grab this patients nurse as I needed 02 and some diazepam.

It was a long and violent seizure and he looked cyanosed. As I was trying to get him into a decent recovery position and get 02 set up the ward consultant comes running over throwing notes across the room and screams at me:

"How very dare you walk away from my ward round!!"

The patient was still seizing at this point. But it wasn't this particular consultants patient so I don't think he cared.

I just carried on with what I was doing. The consultant walked off in a rage. There was a little 96 year old lady who was walking by with a zimmer frame on her way to the toilet. She witnessed the whole thing and she is as sharp as a knife. As the consultant walked away she looked at him in disgust and said "what a twat, the god damned bastard".

Maybe you had to be there but her comment had me in stitches for the rest of the day. I am still laughing because she was so cute. I love old people.

6 comments:

  1. Good for the old lady!

    Something very similar happened to me once. A patient newly back from surgery was dropping his BP and the readivacs were filling up with blood alarmingly. The registrar of the team responded to my call and I was busy putting up gelofusin, starting oxygen, doing obs as you do when the consultant of a different team stuck his head through the curtains and proceeded to yell at me because I had not yet changed the toe dressing on one of his patients.

    The very poorly patient we were with then took off his oxygen mask and said "Why don't you fuck off. I'm trying not to die here"

    One-Nil to patient. He survived BTW.

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  2. You're actually well within your rights to make a complaint against this consultant (although I suspect you already know this). I know it's a hard thing to do, to complain about someone who is a senior colleague, but if we don't do something, these attituades will never change.

    He had an obligation to come and help you, not to shout at you for abandoning his ward round. He failed that obligation, and this should be pointed out to him!

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