summer employment

Monday I started my new summer job as a health tech at a Boston hospital. I won't identify it or name any names, but I will say that it's a medium sized hospital that's very friendly and welcoming so far.

Anyway, this job is a special program for medical students who have just finished their first year. I'm working as a health tech, which is just another way of saying a nursing assistant. What's really cool is that the whole program is especially designed for med students to see what roles the nurses and other hospital staff have in the hospital. By putting us on the job with the nursing service, the hospital is hoping to get medical students (future doctors) to have more respect for other members of the health care team, and learn how to communicate better with nurses. In other words, they're hoping to give us an education in respect and feed us some humble pie.

And boy has it been humbling so far.

I didn't realize how little they taught in medical school until I got on the wards. Sure, the first few days of work were just orientation--where the cafeteria is, how to wash your hands (yes, we got a 3 hour lecture on how to wash our hands), and how to call a code. Orientation was mostly dry and boring, with the exception of having one afternoon to play around with the medical equipment. They sent us down some clinical engineers and some useful gadgets--a vitals machine, an EKG machine, a machine to help prevent DVT, a bladder scanner to scan how much urine is in the bladder, and my favorite of all, the Hoyer lift. We practiced lifting each other from a desk to another chair on these miniature-sized cranes, and it was pretty neat.

Today was my first half-day on the actual ward. The charge nurse was completely frazzled when I got there. Nurses take turns being the charge nurse when the nurse manager isn't there, and this particular nurse moaned, "Oh, I hate being in charge!!" before immediately sending me off to go change a patient's bed linens (hey, I didn't say this was going to be a glamorous job).

Uh, well never having changed a patient's sheets before... I walk into the room hesitantly. "WAIT!" yells the nurse before I barely cross the threshold. "You need to glove up and put on a gown. He's got MRSA!"

Oh great. Barely 5 minutes into the job and I'm going to get or spread MRSA. Wonderful! No harm was done since I had barely entered the room and without touching anything, so I went back outside and gloved up and sloppily tied a gown around me before going in to do the sheets.

What was slightly worse, though a taste of what's to come: there was an attending and what looked like an intern in the room already with the patient. They were trying to get an arterial blood gas (ABG) sample from the patient who was sitting in an armchair squeezed next to the bed. Of course I was trying to change the sheets without getting in their way, but I could tell they were annoyed that I was in the room and doing MY job while they were doing THEIRS. Go figure. And of course they exited the room with the attending giving the intern advice and encouragement that the next one would be easier, and of course they didn't say bye to me or introduce themselves. I can tell this'll be an interesting experience already.

So overall I'm on a pretty low-key ward, where patients aren't super sick or about to crash any second. But we are the one with the most filled beds in the hospital, so I expect it'll get crazy busy sometimes. Already I've found that there are some interesting patients to talk to, and hopefully I'll hear a few good stories from them and others before the end of July.

More this weekend after I get my feet wet tomorrow.