Doc Ahmad Hajiri

Emergency Room Surgical Trauma Rotator It was just another regular evening on a 24-hour duty at the Emergency Department (ED or ER, for most of us). I was one of the only two Trauma Interns on duty and was just taking a break from charting a very long list of patients--ranging from those who fell from stairs to those intoxicated madmen stabbing each other to death! It's a rare occasion for Trauma ER to have no patients in 3 hours time so I grabbed that opportunity to go out and buy a cold drink at the ER kiosk (it was already around 1:00 AM by the way).  On my way back to our station in the Acute Care Unit (ACU), I could see the triage area was already in a mess. ("Triage" by the way is the place where patients would go first before they are assigned with to different departments). There were piles of stretcher-beds (with patients on them, of course!) and hordes of their watchers waiting to be seen by our Triage officer (TO). Where was the TO, you asked? I wo...

"Bantay" or "watchers" are those who come and stay in the hospital to accompany the patient. Mostly, they are the patient's parents (notably, mothers), grandparents, siblings or even cousins. Sometimes, they are just a close relative, a friend, a neighbor or even at times, just a stranger, a passer-by. We see them everyday. We interact with them almost at all times. Although we often neglect their mere presence, we cannot deny that they are among those who play an important role in the management of our patients' health and well-being.  This is just a portrayal of how a day of a "bantay" begins as they enter the hospital for the first time through the Emergency Room.... *I used the Tagalog language in this post as I found it the most relevant and appropriate in this setting.  ====  “Kayo po ba ang bantay ng pasyente?” “Opo. Ako po.” “Ah, OK po. Eto po yung mga kailangang gawin. Kailangan po namin siya kunan ng dugo para po sa...

 Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you!) Alhamdulillah, my first week as a clinical clerk is almost over (as of this writing hehe). And I am done with one-fourth of my first rotation: Pediatrics Emergency Room (Pedia ER).   As I may have mentioned in my revious post, Clerks are supposed to rotate for one month under Pediatrics which is subdivided further into 3 departments/services: Wards 9 or 11, Pedia ER and NICU (Neonatal ICU). My group was assigned under PER for our first week. I honestly enjoyed rotating in PER for several reasons. First are the Pedia residents. They are all cool and fun to be with, they always have time to laugh around and be happy with simple things even with all those toxicities they have; they are always ready help and teach us students with essential knowledge and concepts in pedia especially on resuscitation. We even had a session of QnA while resuscitating a patient! Awesome! They are always approachable ad can understand us clerks who...

It's official. I am indeed THE toxic magnet in our group. It was just recently proven last Friday during my short ER duty under the Surgery Department. Just a little over an hour since I logged-in and a number of trauma cases came in one after the other. Two vehicular accident with one of them receiving a compound, comminuted open fracture of the left tibia and fibula (in simpler terms, his bones where crushed and we can see them jotting out from his bleeding legs. He was literally screaming his lungs out due to pain @_@  Yeah, sorry for the bloody description...). Not an hour had passed and another patient was brought to us, unconscious and barely breathing. What happened? He tried to kill himself by hanging with a rope x_x Good thing our DEM doctors are really good at "reviving" (?) patients. He was given proper resuscitation procedures while we try to interview his family members what really happened and how long he had been "hanged". It was just a f...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all!) The second week as an ICC student in the Department of Pediatrics just ended with a rather "incomplete" sets of days in a week. We had special non-working, no-classes holidays the past 2 weeks that reduced our class days from 10 to 7 (due to the Feast of Black Nazarene last January 9 and now the Papal Visit from Jan 15-19). And as a result, all those supposedly scheduled lectures and case conferences were cramped in the remaining school days!  It was actually exhausting: to report on a case conference at 7:30 then have an ER duty the next night and then go back to class the next morning!!! What now, are we finally and slowly turning into zombies? But then again, we chose this path from the very beginning, and there are no reason to complain about these right now... Why dream of being a doctor if you want to feel nothing but ease and comfort? Things don't do that way. Always. And exhausting as it may seem, we are still hav...