Overwhelmed

Three of my senior residents have gone on examination leave, and I am left with two second year residents and three first year residents. No wonder they are overwhelmed. They have been used to having seniors tell them what to do, and now suddenly they have to decide what to do and do it themselves. They did not tell me so in so many words. But their actions clearly suggest that. One of my second year residents wrote in the first line of a patient’s history that she had undergone a sterilization operation (where she should have written the chief complaint), and in the place for operative history that she had not undergone any operation. She also referred a patient to radiology registrar to have a patient’s electrocardiogram reported. Luckily I intercepted the paper and changed ‘radiology’ to ‘medicine’ using her pen so that no one would be any wiser. One of my first year residents wrote a patient’s complaint was ‘defacuation’, which I could not comprehend. The patient told me she had difficulty in passing stools. I called this resident what he meant by the word ‘defacuation’, and after thinking for a while he said he was thinking of constipation when he wrote that. Another of my first year residents got a patient’s blood pressure checked by an intern and advised to write it on the patient’s right palm instead of her case paper. She had no explanation for that. I asked her if the pathologists wrote their autopsy reports on the backs of the dead bodies. I knew they did not, but I wanted her to get the message. She showed no indication of having got the message. So I told her that I would write her post-completion certificate on her right palm too. Finally I told them I would write all this in my blog. I hope they do not get further overwhelmed by that.