Spencer Park Wk5

ER

-                A WCMC employee walked in because he felt something in the back of his eye and was worried he had a mass growing. I was able to observe for the first time ultrasound being done on an eye. Fortunately, nothing was found.

-                An NYU professor with Phase III ovarian cancer, which was removed via surgery. It reappeared and now she’s undergoing chemotherapy. Had an extensive conversation with her regarding my research and she was fascinated. We bonded over the book ‘Emperor Of All Maladies’.

-                Burn patient who burned herself while cooking. Oil splashed onto her upper chest and neck along with fire. She had olive oil on her hair which also caught on fire. She was extremely skinny, as if emaciated. I later saw her bring brought into the Burn ICU and was interesting to see how the interaction between the ER and other ICUs occur

-                Overheard complaints about the Surgery Dept and how they wanted to ‘duck’ a patient saying her conditions were medical, not surgical. She had a tumor, which was removed. But then she started having nausea, which kept her from eating. They found that she had kidney failure, at which time, the ER tried to send her back up to Surgery. But they refused.

-                An old man who fell on a street and hit his head on the concrete. CT showed extensive bleeding in his head and damage to his right ear.

-                A man tried to hit a nurse. They think he has psychological disorders. He was put on security watch.

-                It was so busy they didn’t have enough beds. All the rooms had two beds and there were beds out in the hallways. Eventually when a man walked in with allergic reaction to nuts, he was sat on a trashcan while they treated him with steroids, anti-histamine, and oxygen tank.

Project

-                It has been taking a much longer time than I had initially expected to gather all the necessary data on each of the patients.

-                Of the ~400 patients that I am studying, about 100 cannot be accessed by me at the moment. Apparently, Eclipsys was updated during the summer of 2007 and all the patient record before the summer of 2007 cannot be accessed using the regular Eclipsys ID.

-                I am in the process of getting access and in the mean time I will be using the access ID of the BICU patient care director, Linda.