New record

The med school has set a new record for political correctness.

We are required to write a report on our elective, specifically I am required to relate my elective (in the inner northern suburbs of Brisbane) to the United Nations Millenium Development Goals which consist of things like eliminating poverty and eradicating malaria.

I pointed out that by world standards no-one in Brisbane is poor: even the poorest person I met on my elective flushes their toilet with clean drinking water while a third of the world's population is drinking sewerage.

Oh, and by the way no-one has malaria and everyone has access to primary education. So rejoice, the Millenium Development Goals have been achieved, years ahead of schedule (in the inner northern suburbs of Brisbane).

Elective over, exam results released

My last shift with the paramedics was Sunday night. I will miss them, they are great guys.

Official results for MEDI1000 (all of first year medicine except the elective) were released today, I got a 4 (pass). They didn't release percentage marks but given medicine's higher pass mark and the fact that I did not get a 5 I can say my mark was in the high fifties or low sixties.

All I have to do now is write the elective report and I am done till the 15th of January.

Statistics: 1, Patients: 0

The Royal Brisbane Hospital has a write-up room for ambulance crews. At any given time there is at least one, usually two or three, ambulance crews in there writing up the case they have just dropped off.

So when a job came up to attend a patient who was 500m from the hospital it struck me as a bit odd that the dispatcher sent our crew, who were at the station ten kilometres away and had to crawl through peak hour traffic, rather than waiting for a crew at the hospital to finish their write-up and send them. A crew coming from the hospital (even with a ten minute delay to finish write-up) would have reached him much earlier than we did.

The answer is, as usual, the triumph of patient care statistics over actual patient care. The communication centre's performance is measured on how quickly they dispatch an ambulance, not how quickly it gets there (another department's problem).

One down, three to go (I think)

The head of the School of Medicine sent out an email yesterday saying that the results of the exam have been calculated but will not be published until the 26th; he goes on to say

The School will be advising the 2 students who have failed and the 7 who will be offered supplementary exams personally, today. So, if you do not hear from us today, you can assume you have passed.

and I have not heard from the so I guess that (subject to completing the elective and its reporting requirements) I am ¼ of the way to being a doctor.

Impressive storm

Very impressive storm in Brisbane last night. Lots of thunder, lightning, wind and rain.

I had a 7pm to 7am shift with the paramedics so I was headed out there on the train. The train stops two stations out of Brisbane and there is an announcement that this is as far as we are going - the storm has cut the railway's power further down the line. We get transferred to a bus which goes another three stations and stops - there are so many fallen trees on the road that the buses cannot get through. After much conversation on the radio the bus proceeds but there is an announcement that some stations (including mine) are inaccessible and will be missed. I take the bus to the nearest one and walk the last kilometer in the rain.

When I got there the station was in darkness. Yes, we did have enough batteries for the defibrillator and radios. We did however lack the power required for the essential coffee required to keep paramedics awake on a night shift.

Our first call was a code 1 (lights, sirens, fast as you can despite half the road being out here and there due to fallen trees) to a "near drowning". The "near drowning" turned out to be a flooded nursing home. No one drowned, in fact no actual risk to life at any point in the process. The fire department crew and nursing home staff invited us to help with the mopping up. We declined "due to caseload".

We did have quite a caseload, though only two jobs all night which were medical emergencies in the usual sense. We (QAS generally, not just our unit) got a lot of false alarms from the VitalCall personal emergency alarm system. We also had lots of calls from people who are on continuous oxygen therapy. Their concentrator systems do not function forever in the absence of mains power and typically they only have a few hours worth of bottled oxygen. They needed to be transported to hospital for the sole purpose of putting them on the hospital's oxygen system.