Hi guys, i'm currently doing my cardiopulmonary placement. This incident didn't happen to me personally but it definitely taught me alot about taking time to do the right thing.
Last week, there was a patient who came in after surgery (laparotomy) and had a drainage tube connected to him. This tube basically was for the drainage of waste matter and had a little balloon attached to the end of it to prevent it from getting yanked out accidentally.
What happened was that one of the doctors was trying to remove the tube from the patient. However, he didn't want to wait for the nurse to run out to grab a syringe to deflate the cuff first. Instead, he pulled on the tube till the balloon was showing and then stabbed the balloon with his pen, thereby causing all the waste matter to splatter on him, another doctor and everywhere else.
As a result, he had to spend the rest of the day getting tested for the different diseases that could he could be infected with and even had to draw up an accident report. This incident maybe funny as we're not the doctor who made that mistake but it really taught me about how tempting it is to take shortcuts (especially when we're tight for time) yet how important and how much more efficient it is to do the right thing and in the right way.
For example, it might only take us 2 secs to check if our patient is nauseous/dizzy on standing but it'd take us alot more time and effort trying to ambulate someone who is or happened to faint or vomit halfway. Therefore, I'm reminded that it's always worthwhile to take some time to do it right, especially when our patients are involved.
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