Sorry it's been so long since the last update! Like everything else, even urgent care gets routine after a while. Plus, my schedule has been pretty sporadic, so there never feels like a good time to write a post.
This past week wasn't too exciting, really, but I did get to do a lot of suturing! On Monday, I got to sew up a woman's arm in four places after she got bit by a dog. Fun fact: dog bites are way less likely to get infected (3-5%) than cat bites (70%) and human bites (80%)! So even though your gut might tell you that sewing up a bite wound is wrong, it's most likely going to be fine if it was a dog that had all its shots. Anyway, that woman got 11 stitches. Right after she left, a man came in after getting sliced in the arm with a piece of sheet metal at work, and he got 8 stitches from me. My preceptor let me do everything - cleaning out the wound, numbing the area, sterilizing the area, and sewing it up! Both patients were also super nice, and easy to talk to, which is good because the whole thing probably took me 45 minutes for the woman and 30 for the man.
Other than that, I've seen a lot of foot/ankle/knee pain this week, so I'm getting pretty good at evaluating that, and remembering all the "special tests" for the knee to figure out which ligament is sprained. We also saw a lot of kids coming in with a "boxer's fracture" (a break in the 4th or 5th metacarpal bone - the hand bones below the pinky and ring fingers) from punching walls! I think we saw three in the same day.
There definitely seem to be themes on any given day - so far, there's been corneal abrasion day, diffuse knee pain with no prior injury (AKA attention-seeking...or a DVT) day, upper respiratory infection day, etc. I worked yesterday, and weekends are definitely much slower than weekdays, which surprised me. I thought people would be more likely to come in on the weekend because they wouldn't have work or other obligations, but apparently not! Over eight hours yesterday (10am-6pm), we only saw 10 people. For reference, on a regular 12-hour day during the week, we usually see 20-24. So, yesterday was pretty slow. Luckily, I have my own computer and bring books to study with, so I never feel like my time is wasted! Plus, everyone that works at the urgent care is nice and fun to hang out with.
I'm working again today from 10am-6pm, and then two more twelve-hour shifts on Tuesday and Thursday. It's not a bad life! Then, next week I start in the actual ER, and I still don't know my schedule for that. I've heard that most people use the ER as an urgent care, so it might not be very different than what I've already seen. I may get to see some major traumas or chest pain/stroke patients though, so it should definitely be a learning experience!
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