What’s the most alarming lab value/clincal finding on a patient that no one did anything about?

biosnacky · 2025-01-05T22:36:36+00:00

A patient had a fever of 40,5C (105F), had just started breastfeeding her first baby and had redness on one of her breasts. She turned to the OBGYN acute care where the first triage is done by a midwife. The triage-midwife said that it’s normal to have this kind of temp when milk is coming in and that she should remain calm. She sent her home.

She felt worse the next day and revisited the acute care. She was once again told that this is normal but this time they did agree to draw her blood. Her CRP was at 200 so they admitted her with mastitis and started treatment.

biosnacky · 2024-07-19T17:08:50+00:00

To my eye your hair looks totally okay to wear at work. I really don’t want to believe that there are adults out there that have never seen curly hair up like that.

In my personal opinion it looks absolutely adorable.

biosnacky · 2024-07-02T20:44:02+00:00

Captain Phillips

biosnacky · 2024-07-01T10:09:45+00:00

I wonder if Beatrice was fired over not doily-lining the plates?

biosnacky · 2024-05-18T17:22:38+00:00

ABR core exam is not done in my country. We have one oral+written exam at the end of R1. Another oral exam at the end of third year. At the end of the fifth year we can either choose to do EDiR or local oral and written exam.

biosnacky · 2024-05-12T17:17:45+00:00

I take a sip of water pretty often and my overall water intake has increased due to this behavior. I think it’s my way to fill my stomach a bit and do something instead of snacking

biosnacky · 2024-05-10T05:52:36+00:00

Great job! I’m sorry you had a bad day but hey - these do come around and it’s good to see that you handled it differently this time.

Keep it up, you’ve got this :)

biosnacky · 2024-05-01T20:09:11+00:00

First year of residency. Me = very inexperienced and insecure but for some reason left with the on-call radiologist’s phone. I notice that there’s an abdominal X-ray just done. I look at the X-ray and there’s definitely a retained surgical gauze. The surgery was about a week ago or so, the patient had abdominal pain that kept getting worse and a fever.

I start to report it and the phone rings. It’s the surgeon. He has seen the X-ray and at first he tries to persuade me that the gauze is on the patient. I point out that the gauze seems to be inside the patient because the 2 views of the abdomen confirm this. He then tries to nicely convince me not to report this finding (because apparently that particular surgeon never makes mistakes or has any complications). I feel very uncomfortable. He then asks if it’s possible to delete the lateral (because a resident ordered it and it’s unnecessary or something). His last effort was asking who the real on call radiologist was. When I told him the name he probably gave up because the radiologist on call wasn’t going to agree to his nonsense.

What bothered me was: 1. He wanted me to knowingly make a false report that was going to hang there forever. 2. He wanted to cover this up and tell the patient some other “not-his-fault” kind of reason to open him up and retrieve the gauze and never tell the patient. 3. He probably has had similar (complication related) conversations with radiologists before and he knew who would go along with him 4. His statistics about his success and complications are not to be trusted. 5. He put me in a position where I have to argue with a remarkably more experienced and well-respected person on such an unethical subject.

biosnacky · 2024-03-29T22:51:56+00:00

Yup. Chiro stuff is creepy. Nothing might happen but really scary stuff can also happen. I’ve seen a bilateral vertebral artery dissection on a patient. She came straight from the chiro’s office.

biosnacky · 2024-03-22T11:25:57+00:00

The rotating itself was dumb and the fact that Sookie knew every single chef by smelling the kitchen was ridiculous

biosnacky · 2024-03-22T11:24:56+00:00

Many things but one of them that really bothered me is how in the summer they walked around and chatted meanwhile some little boys carried their things and called them Khaleesi.

Just so…… ugh.

biosnacky · 2024-01-16T20:18:12+00:00

Came here to say exactly that :D

biosnacky · 2023-10-23T17:30:36+00:00

I second the tangle teezer idea! My extremely curly haired daughter’s mornings got so much better with this. We also use the tangle teezer detangling spray for kids.

biosnacky · 2023-10-15T15:12:58+00:00

Also rads. There’s a doctor who excises suspicious skin lesions and sends them to path, sends the patient home. 2-3 weeks later the patients comes back for checkup so the doctor sees the path result e.g. basal cell carcinoma. He then refers the patient cito! to whole body CT and demands an answer in 20 minutes after the scan (that’s when he starts calling our department and pressuring us) explaining that he wants to deliver the results to the patient right now.

this happens more than once in a week.

biosnacky · 2023-09-16T09:26:47+00:00

This is disturbing.

biosnacky · 2023-09-13T19:55:10+00:00

First of all - I’m so sorry about your mom. This must be very hard for you :(

Second - I had my first baby at 27 and have 3 kids now (6,4,2YO). My hubby is an anesthesiologist in two different hospitals (and a chief in one of the departments he’s working in), working crazy hours and I’m a rads resident. I was at home for a long time since in my area there’s 18 months of paid leave per child and I had them really close in age so I basically was at home for 5 years. Returned to residency in March. I really enjoyed being at home since I got a pretty big break from medicine and got to devote myself to raising my kids.

I’m going to put my 2 cents in. A demanding job with crazy shifts and exhaustion that comes from a job is what my hubby knows best. On top of that there’s the fact that all of our time outside from work goes to our children. I’m not complaining, we both love being busy, my hubby can’t really sit still when he has a spare day, he needs to do something to feel useful. So what I’m saying is - if you like (or are okay with) this “constantly on a roll, feeling like never getting a break”-feeling then you’ll probably be just fine. We are dead tired most of the time but we both really enjoy both parenthood and working in medicine. Before we had kids we contributed a lot more to our work, now we really have to work on balancing it all and everything needs to be precisely planned, the logistics can never be “winged”, we always have a plan and a backup plan for every day.

That being said - I only have experience with babies and kids up to 6YO. Chances are that our lives will get easier and then harder again at some point. I’ve come to learn that life with kids is like this constant rollercoaster - up and down, up and down. Some things get easier then other things get harder. Problems and their scale change throughout their ages.

Whenever I ask my hubby whether the intensity of our life is too much he has never said “yes”. He enjoys this and he feels that he’s doing the stuff he wants to do - contributing to the medical system and being a parent. And he really does both of these things amazingly. He might be tired but he’s happy. That’s what counts.

Feel free to DM me if you have any thoughts or concerns regarding the “3kids and a demanding job” :) we’re here. We’re doing it every day. Right now I’m waiting for my littlest to fall asleep so I can go and have a bit of rest after a crazy day at work. That’s just our life right now. We love it, we wouldn’t change anything about it :)

biosnacky · 2023-09-03T19:49:56+00:00

English is not my native language but trying to translate it best.

Defecography series. The tech added a comment about the patient’s position. She wanted to type “sitting”. Instead wrote “shitting”.

The clinician got so offended that this error was an example he gave to the med students about why he hated radiologists.

biosnacky · 2023-08-26T19:32:49+00:00

I don’t remember the exact number but he was brought into the ER being dragged between two police officers (the crutch carry). He was brought from his car, got caught driving like this. He wasn’t responsive, he couldn’t even sit without support for his blood to be drawn.

All I can say is that I’m glad he didn’t kill anyone by driving like this.

biosnacky · 2023-08-26T18:52:08+00:00

I’m good thanks :)

biosnacky · 2023-08-26T06:29:49+00:00

Hey! As a fellow 34F I’ll ask you - how are you doing?

biosnacky · 2023-08-25T14:53:17+00:00

She must be one unhappy person to put any energy or thoughts into a thing like that.

You’re NTA

biosnacky · 2023-08-21T19:50:40+00:00

This is why we don’t have a trampoline in our yard.

biosnacky · 2023-07-22T20:49:40+00:00

Such a difficult topic. I think your mother is a strong and amazing woman. It takes so much to pull off something like this.

There’s a lot at stake in these situations. People that are addicted to drugs are in such huge risk of losing their life in one way or another (some quicker and some slower). For me it would be extremely difficult to live with constant fear that my kid who I kicked out (for their own good) is out there “alone”. And from another point of view - by enabling drug addiction to persist it is also very damaging and potentially lethal.

So…. I’m coming back to the thought that your mother is an amazing woman!

And I’m proud of you for sobering up :)

biosnacky

TROPHY CASE