Medicine isn't quite like TV glamour...

So I'm pretty sure that every student when they first think of applying for medicine thinks that at some point, they're going to be really cool. They're going to be rushing to emergencies, everyone waiting on them, where they will quickly do something to save someone's life. People sweeping around in white coats, shouting "clear" and patients suddenly sitting up, dramatically awoken. "Thankyou doctor!"

...I haven't even seen ANY doctor do that.
(Anaesthetists save people's lives all the time and are surprisingly calm about it!)

I haven't even done CPR on anyone yet.


I have, however, in the course of my studies so far seen one cardiac arrest, which differed somewhat to the ones you see on television...

The patient in question was a middle-aged guy who was pretty confused on the ward, I think he was an alcoholic and had schizophrenia.
What had happened was he had started to defecate in the middle of his cubicle while a nurse was trying to get him changed- the nurse had tried to stop him and went to pull his trousers up.
Poor guy trips on his trousers/slips in his own poo, falls backwards, bashes his head and subsequently goes bradycardic (gets a much too slow heartbeat)/possibly arrested.

I hear all the alarms and run into the room after the doctors to see what's going on.

What do I see? A half-dressed man on the floor, trousers round his ankles and poo everywhere, with 10 people scrabbling around on the floor next to him, doing CPR, trying to get a cannula into him (and getting blood on the floor too).

"Yep" I thought. "Medicine really isn't like what you see on TV".

When he came round he swore at everyone too.





*Added bonus to further prove my point* This awesome comic by SMBC: