So today I presented my first CCU patient, and relearned a host of lessons I had thought were past. ICU patients, of course, are presented in a different format than ward patients, and I was rusty on that format. I was also very far behind in rounding today, and essentially I failed in every quantifiable area of accomplishment where my patient was concerned. Justly, I received some very stern correction for this, culminating in one of the interventional cards guys drifting from "know the patient" to "have a differential diagnosis." This particular lesson was not necessary in my case, but a few others were, so he can be forgiven for going overboard.
He did say that if next year I saw a patient in the ER with severe, tearing chest pain radiating to the back with blood pressure different in each arm and I activated the cath lab, calling him in from a sound sleep at 2am, then "I will throw you off the top floor of the hospital. Which would be tragic. Because the patient would die."
Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome, but I love cardiology.
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