My first patient...

Yesterday I enrolled my first patient in my reseach study. I was totally excited and nervous at the same time. I got to the hospital about 7:00 am, changed into my scrubs so I would look legit and went to talk to the patient. As soon as we got in the room she started talking. He told me everything! I knew all about her, her life, her kids, her medical problems, you name it, she told me. Anyway after ~20 minutes she let me and the clinical research nurse introduce ourselves and we told her about our study and to my surprise she told me she would do it (after explaining to me why she was such a good reseach candidate).

My project was going great until I arrived in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) where the patients go right after surgery before going to their room or being discharged. Then, everything sort of fell apart. One of the nurses was just plain rude to me and told me my project was stupid and it was never going to work, although everyone else seemed to think it would, and the nurse taking care of my patient gave her so many drugs (unnecessarily in my mind) that the part of my project that was supposed to be completed in the PACU was pretty much impossible.

This is supposed to be a learning experience I guess, and I can tell you I LEARNED A LOT! I learned to control my temper and not tell the nurse where to go :)

Anyway, I am getting ready to follow up with my patient and start all over tomorrow with a new (hopefully two) patient(s). Hopefully the PACU experience goes a little better!