Emergency Room First Day

Many eye openers. Pts stay 2 hours anything longer needs to be sorted, discharged or admitted. A patient was order vent/atrovent nebs. This is not something a nurse can do. We call the respiratory therapist. At first I thought this was some sort of American thing. Apparently is Saudi Arabia's answer to job creation. People that fell short academically of nursing or medicine or physio etc, get trained to do airway management. It sounds good in practice but it does leave the nurse at a risk of deskilling.

Anyway, the same pt then required an ECG. Well that is something I can do, not quite, they have a team for that too. So I sat around reading policies for 8 hours. One policy I found was the care of the dead. Saudi Arabia does not have a coronial court. People are buried within 24 hours. After someone dies all the tubes etc are removed. The body is released and investigations are done with the notes. Sounds very American. Get the paperwork in order, only the paperwork and nothing but the paperwork. But the ED does have a fantastic front sheet. Triage, obs, meds, fluids, progress notes all on the same page. In this particular case much less than Calvary. But the personal care is so much better at Calvary.

I know I pick on the American system, but it is ranked 35th in the world for quality but is marketed so well everyone just absorbs it. It just is not the best. Far from it.

Anyway to celebrate the end of orientation, my first shift, John and Penny finally getting paid and the end of the working week, we are off to a 'bar'. I kid you not, one of the other compounds has a villa secretly set up as a bar servicing alcoholic home brew. Add baker's yeast to the local beer and somehow brew ?wine. At SAR10 a glass, I shall see if it is closer to Metho or chardonnay before I get too inebriated.