Day fourty-five - Wednesday

A&E first thing, had a patient that essentially needed a chronic pain review. Complex history, luckily one of the docs in the dept was a GP who knew the patient and so took over. Slow morning after that, with only a finger wound review that came in and took a couple of minutes - essentially a wound had become infected and developed cellulitis but now was clearing up nicely.

Lunch then a dramatic looking knee injury came in, large laceration across the patellar around 15cm long. Couldn't really do much with it except steristrip and dress, as sutures would not take in the thin skin and would probably pull out with all the bending movements. Required good irrigation first before one of the ENPs sorted out the dressing. Another patient then required an im injection into the gluteus, was good to go over the safe injection site knowledge from first year anatomy sessions! Intramuscular injection is really straightforward but I haven't had the chance to do many so far, maybe in GP I'll be giving out more immunisation injections. So was good to go over it.

A good samaritan then dropped off a head injury patient at the department, having picked them up after seeing them fall over. Did the full assessment, history, examination, cranial nerves, neuro exams. No worrying symptoms (vomiting/loss of consciousness/severe headache/amnesia) so after review they were given some head injury advice including things to look out for over the next 24 hrs and discharged. Then two majors patients came in, both chest pains. The first had a complex cardiac history but was fairly well, the second had no history and was pretty sick. Took bloods and helped clerk them in before leaving them in the hands of the docs and heading home for some dinner. Another satisfying day, saw quite a lot and reviewed stuff I wasn't too strong on.

Rang Mike in the evening - the forecast for Sunday was apocalyptic so I decided to head over to Skye tomorrow morning, try the ridge Friday and come back Saturday evening. The ferry would probably be cancelled on Sunday due to the weather and I didn't want to get stranded on Skye! Downloaded the Skye ridge mini-guide from Rockfax website, had a quick read and pulled some of my kit together. Left most of the packing for the morning as it was pretty late by then. Psyched!