So I was on-call over the weekend. You see, normally I'm just an F1, but when I'm on call I get upgraded to an 'SHO (senior house officer)' because strictly speaking paeds surgery ought to be an SHO job.
Bleeeeeep.... bleeeep...
I pick up the phone to find out who bleeped me.
Me: 'Hi it's the Paeds Surgery SHO on call here, did you just bleep me?' It was an ENT (ear nose throat) SHO on the other side of the phone.
ENT SHO: 'Hi... I'm sorry, I think I need a bit of help. I know it's quite a big favour to ask. But we have this 3-year-old patient here who needs bloods taken. Well you see, I've never taken blood for a child before so I don't really know how to do it. I was wondering if you'd be able to help...'
Me: 'Yeah I don't mind giving it a go. There's no guarantee that I'm going to get it, but yeah I mean I'm happy to try.'
ENT SHO: 'Yeah I'm really sorry to have to bother you with this. It's just that I've called the paeds medics and they said if it's a child going for surgery it's nothing to do with them, so they told me to call you.'
Me: 'Yeah that's alright, don't worry.'
ENT SHO sounding very helpless indeed: 'But seriously, HOW on earth do you take blood from a 3-year-old??'
Me: (didn't quite know how to answer that) 'Umm... uh... I don't know. It's just kinda like adults, but... smaller? Haha.'
ENT SHO: 'Oh and also... he's black.' (people with dark skin are much harder to see veins on)
Me: 'Haha yeah, I'm sure the dark skin doesn't help. But anyway, I'll come as soon as I'm free and I'll try.'
My registrar happened to be standing next to me during this conversation and as nice as she normally would be, she muttered to me: 'No, don't help them. It's fine, they ought to do it themselves. If not they can ask the paeds medics, but you don't have to help them. Unless if you want to.' Which I thought was a bit harsh... so I went on to help them anyway, since I was sitting around not doing very much with myself.
So luckily I managed to get the blood that was needed and had them sent off. I phoned the ENT SHO back to tell him I'd done it for him.
And I had never heard an SHO be so thankful to me: 'Oh thank you SO much. No really. You don't understand...'
From his tone over the phone, I could tell he's been sh*tting himself when he was landed with this task by his reg/consultant. Obviously he hadn't had much experience with kids either by the sounds of it. And having already been declined help by the paeds medics, he was pretty desperate. While my reg did have a point, I didn't see what was so wrong about helping someone else who's struggling. Look - doctors don't come bleeping you to piss you off; frantically phoning around for help is not their idea of fun either (and certainly not for guys). In modern medicine and in hospitals where the blame culture is ever so strong, people are so defensive and unwilling to take a step out of their own 'job description' that they forget why they choose this profession in the first place. And maybe it's the juniors that still remember it, so I thought I ought to help before I progress to higher ranks and forget. If you ask me, I think doctors should make an effort to be nice to one another because no one else in the hospital does. And one day - just wait for it - it will be you on the other side of the phone.
What I should've done though (which my registrar later told me), was to ask the ENT SHO to watch me while I'm doing the bloods so he'd know how to do it next time. But while 'see one, do one, teach one' is the way medicine goes, I just thought that at my stage of training it would be a little big-headed. =p Plus I'm sure that's probably when I'll fail to get the blood.
What I didn't tell the ENT SHO (who's likely to be an F2) on the other side of the phone though, is that fact that while I'm the 'paeds surgery SHO on call'... I'm really only an F1.
But I think I'll spare him the embarrassment. =p