The above picture is Rush University Medical Center. The building on the left is the new hospital, the Tower. This medical campus is where I will be for approximately 40 hours a week until mid-March.
CPE for me began on Wednesday, January 4, 8:30 am. Most of weeks 1 and 2 were orientation, and parts of week 3 will be as well. There are three students in my CPE group, me, Nick and Mike. Mary is our supervisor.
Before beginning CPE, many people told me that orientation weeks would be exhausting. I didn't really believe it could be THAT tiring....but I was wrong. Many days, I came home at 5:00...and promptly took a nap. Talking on the phone was a challenge for a few days...I kept leaving words out of sentences.
This is not to say anything negative about the experience, just that it has been tiring. Made all the more tiring on Tuesday/Wednesday. I got to the hospital at about 8:00 on Tuesday morning. I left the hospital at 2:30 Wednesday afternoon. I had just completed my first on-call, shadowing one of the staff.
When one is on call at Rush, it begins with accepting the on-call pager at 8:30 in the morning. You are responsible for taking care of (or referring if appropriate) any pages that come through until 8:30 the next day, when someone else takes the pager. The night I shadowed, we received several calls for visits - patients just wanting a chaplain to come talk to them. We received a call to do a DPOA, a Durable Power of Attorney. At Rush, any request for a DPOA, or even a request for information regarding one, is taken care of by a chaplain. After doing all of those things, and having dinner, we went back to the on-call room. The on-call room is a dorm-like room where the on-call chaplain stays overnight. There is also a bathroom and a second room with a bed. The second room is sometimes used by us and sometimes used by other departments as an on-call room. Pat was the chaplain I shadowed and I actually had a really good time with her. She gave me lots of practical advice...and I gave her some hints on speeding up computer work. ;) We had some good conversation. We went to bed about 2:15 in the morning. She got a code blue (patient stopped breathing or heart stopped) page at 4:30. She called and the nurse said they would call back when family were on their way. Got the phone call at 5:00. We got to the patient's room by about 5:30. The patient died about 5 minutes after we got there. So we stayed with the family, filled out paperwork, got them parking passes, and they left about 2 hours later. We then finished our charting, went back to the room, and got our stuff to be at On Call Report at 8:30. Which is kind of self-explanatory. The on-call person(s) tell everyone else in the department (well, whoever happens to be there) what happened in the last 24 hours.
We have also gotten lots of food these past weeks. One person said that at Rush, CPE actually stands for "Chaplains Perpetually Eating." Fine with me!
We have learned how to do charting of every visit.
We have learned what the Ethics consultation service does.
We have learned what Living Wills, Durable Powers of Attorneys, and the Health Care Surrogate Act are.
We have learned that we need to figure out what, theologically, we are ok with doing. They have told us several times that we will never be forced to do anything against our beliefs....but that we may need to make it happen. I.e. Jewish rabbi was asked to do a baptism. Not in his beliefs. He doesn't do it. Instead, he facilitates it and has the father do it. Things like that.
We have visited the morgue.
We have learned how to use pagers. And I noticed today that our names have finally been changed from last quarter's interns!
We have learned many other things, but some of them have slipped my mind. Information overload. But, not to worry, we have a binder with cheatsheets.
I learned that I really like cheeseburgers and fries from the cafeteria. And that the cafeteria is the cheapest (and is actually reasonable) place to eat in the hospital.
I visited my first patient on a 'cold call' yesterday. I know that sounds bad, but it's what it is. You just walk into a room to talk to a patient with no knowledge of them whatsoever. I got kicked out. Not rudely, but I got kicked out. We were told this would happen and that we need to respect that. We are the only professionals that a patient can kick out of the room - they can't really kick their doctors or nurses out. It's one of the few things they still have control of. So if they want us out, we should get out.
I talked to another patient today, and it went much better. He wanted information about a DPOA.
Sunday there is going to be a memorial service. This is held quarterly for all of the patients who have died in the last quarter. I am participating in it and am reading the Lord's Prayer.
Monday will be an interesting day.
I am on call.
By myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment