Standing at the ward desk, I wondered why my bleep kept making sounds. Noone had bleeped me that day....ahh but the emergency bleep did go off in handover this morning...hang on, wait a second....I check my bleep. Drat, I'm on call. Rubbish, I'll have to phone my husband and tell him he can't go to badminton tonight as I need him to look after Little Miss whilst I work.
'medical alert, medical alert, A&E resus, ETA 5 minutes'. Are you being serious? I've now also got to inform the team that a) I'm on call, and b) I need to be on route to resus for an emergency.
The usual hubbub occurs when the patient comes in, secure the airway, check the vitals, gain access, take bloods. Nothing unusual about this patient. I get stuck in, I'm given the blood and start spliting the sample between bottles. I plunge the needle into the blood cultures bottle and pull it out gently. Ouch, that scratched me....oh dear lord, I think...I peel back my gloves...I've got a needle stick injury. I pull my gloves off, run the tap with my hand under it and try to squeeze blood out of the most miniscule cut. I grab the attention of someone else, I hiss 'I've got a needlestick, can you finish the bloods for me please'. 5 minutes later I don a fresh set of gloves, and help back with the patient.
Once it's all settled, a lovely colleague contacts occupational health. They tell him what bloods to take from the patient, he counsels the patient and gains consent for his blood to be tested for blood bourne viruses. He agrees.
Occupational health are nice enough. Until they need to take blood. 'Make a fist with your hand'. Umm no, sorry I can't do that. The only other time someone asked me to do that, the act of taking blood hurt so much I promised myself I'd never make a fist again. The reasoning is simple. A nice relaxed muscle is easy to part fibres and hurts less than a contracted muscle. She takes the blood eventually. One week later my arm is still bruised, a good 5cm area. My veins are clear and obvious and easy to take blood from. It shouldn't have been that hard.
'Ahh, you had your Hep B more than 2 years ago, you'll need another one of those'. No problem, I go through the consent form. I'm breastfeeding, I tell them. I'm told I can't have it, but it shouldn't matter. Later that day I think about it. I check the BNF (book of medications). Why if a newborn can have a half dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, can't I have it? It's not like half of the vaccine is going to come out through my milk. Back I go to occupational health the next day. I explain my reasoning, and that I want the Hep B. 'No problem, I just didn't think you'd want it' comes the reply. That one sentence, which destroys everything that we are taught at university. Medicine is no longer a paternalistic society, so why is occupational health?!
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