“Brain or brawn, you must get on with the job!”
When we scanned through our internship timetable the first time we got them, our eyes ran swiftly through all the names until they fell upon one particular posting, which although only a fortnight long, is enough to make our breath catch in our throat. That specific fortnight, I made a mental note, would undoubtedly be a challenging one, test of our mettle. That was also the first posting in my timetable that warranted just a little bit of fear. But it is in September, that’s ages away ! I thought as I dismissed the posting as absolutely not an immediate concern. But April turned into September a little too quickly, the scorching summer gave way to still scorching summer but with rains, and almost too soon I was staring at the face of the Orthopaedics department, giving my joining letter on the first day of the rotation.
There are four units of Orthopaedics in our Hospital, and the division of work is just a little lopsided in favour of Unit 3 and 4 as these have only one Emergency day, or Admission Day ( Ad Day ) as we say in our college, in a week, while the first two units have two in a week. So for the umpteenth time on the first day of a posting we were waiting in suspense to know which unit we get allotted into. I still thank my lucky stars to this day that I got placed in unit 3.
Because orthopaedics was the first of our major subjects posting, we come rather nascent and unprepared here with regard to clinical skills. I still was intimated by the idea of having to sample dozens of blood samples, or manage patients presenting in acute emergency, or even arrange blood for the patient from the blood bank in crisis. But fifteen days in ortho filled all of these lacunae in my skills. My first ad day was on a Sunday, so it meant we only had to sit in the casualty as the OPD was closed. Here in our college, residents are nearly always present to first attend to any and every patient who shows, so we interns are not the ones to make any calls in the management of patient, but follow instructions as told. Putting intracath, dressing the wound, suturing if required, removing sutures, that is, any minor OT procedure is the job of the intern. Sisters are always there to guide us in minor OT though, but they always have a good laugh at our expense whenever any newbie shows up with shabby skills, and the taunts are always a mastery in sarcasm. All that is in good fun though, and I for one learnt a lot from the Sisters about the finer skills of all the said procedures.
I had day shift of 12 hours on first day, and even though orthopaedics casualty come one behind nearly six surgery casualties, residents kept me on toe with other work like bringing the photographs of patients’ xray films from the xray room ( they don’t provide actual physical films ), or moving some files from casualty to the ward, or arranging and starting the blood transfusion of patients in the ward. The day wore on, and fell into a lull in the afternoon and in the evening surgery residents ordered pizzas for their interns (who hadn’t even got a lunch break amidst all the work), and I readily joined in. The day was on the whole quite light, but just as my shift was ending, we had a flurry of patients coming in, some of minor RTA and one of tibial fracture. The following post ad day and OT day both meant no respite from work.
On the second ad day, we first sat in the OPD till 2. There we were taught how to apply POP casts for various fractures, like above elbow and below elbow slabs. After OPD I went back home, had lunch, slept and again back for the night shift. The work was similar to the earlier ad day, additionally I had to sit in the ward from 1 to 3 am to complete patients’ files. On the third ad day, the OPD was a particularly busy one, so the resident asked us also to sit down and start seeing patients. We fell into a flow and soon enough we two interns were seeing all the patients first, and sending only the complex ones to residents. The experience we had gotten in rural posting came in extremely handy. In the evening the resident told us that patients would come to him and ask where we were, saying “hame unhi doctor ko dikhana hai”, meaning us, and I was extremely pleased with myself.
The more hectic the branch is, the stronger the bond is between co workers. It was an India vs Australia match that evening, so everyone in the casualty – surgery and orthopaedics residents and interns, Sister and Brother all sat watching, and commenting and discussing the game. All this ofcourse, while working. My JRs ordered me a pizza and cake, a fitting last day for an eventful posting. My friends posted in units 1 and 2 told that they had comparatively much more work than us, but that means more hands-on experience.
This posting of ours coincided with the festive season, with many major celebrations here in Vidarbha, which warranted a government holiday. It worked in our favour as I got a couple of unexpected days off as the OTs remained closed. Ganpati in our college is the grandest celebration of the year, however as this is the Platinum Jubilee year of our college, the celebration of the same in December is the centre of attention. Ganpati was thus much quieter this year, but we did have our batch aarti and got a chance to dress up and flaunt our traditional outfits.
Studies took a backseat this buzzing fortnight, but I don’t mind, for the posting was a rewarding one.