My 5th night on call was, by far, the quietest night I have experienced. I was glad it was quiet. But there is a superstition which states that if you a quiet night the day before, you'll have a busy night the next day. hmmm...so I shall see what happens tonight. Hope nothing untoward takes place. *fingers crossed *toes crossed too.
The night started off quite weird. A nurse asked me to prescribe an antiepileptic drug for a patient. An oral drug has already been prescribed. However, the patient was not allowed to have anything through his mouth, so therefore, his drug have to be given in a different route other than the mouth. I looked up the drug guidebook produced by the hospital. I could not find any drug that matches the patient's oral antiepileptic. I asked if he can give the drug through the patient's rectum, and the answer I got back was, "Do you think if you were the patient , you would like to have your rectum stuck with a pill after bowel surgery?" I was speechless and just agreed that I would not like to take my medication through that method.
Another problem was some of the drugs which I thought were suitable was not stocked in the drug cabinet. sigh. There is no way the patient can miss his dose of the antiepileptic drug, because his epilepsy was never well controlled. I decided to seek help from a senior doctor on call. And she felt funny that the patient was not allowed to have his drug orally, especially when the patient is not vomiting or anything. So after much discussion, she said to just give the patient orally. I told the nurse the instruction from the senior doctor, and boy he was not too happy. I don't know about you, but I thought this whole issue was abit weird. I do not know much about prescribing antiepileptics and I was worried that the patient may go into an attack if I gave the wrong medication. haha.
Oh well, the rest of the night was filled with calls to prescribe pain relief and to look at a few patients who developed fever. I had about 1 hour of silence, in which I dozed off on the table for about 30mins and had toast with a cup of tea, prepared by a nurse. hehe.
Ok la...i'm counting down to my weekend! Just 2 more nights to go.
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