Day thirty-eight - Wednesday

Had a chilled out morning, went in for 10ish. Bit busier today, with two ENPs on. Got straight in with a collapse, query cause. I had the job of trying to get a collateral history from some witnesses, on the phone too various employers trying to get mobile numbers. Had to stop and think before leaving a message, making sure I didn't break any confidentiality about the patient in case I had the wrong number! A while later they phoned back and were able to give a good account, resulting in an admission to hospital. So important in cases of collapse to get a decent collateral history as the patient often doesn't remember it, and things like fitting are really important to know but the patient themselves may be unaware it happened. Next up a limping child, followed by a very complex psychiatric case. So difficult to know where to start, especially as I didn't know the full history, and with psych stuff it's just impossible to get a true idea of what's going on in an A&E consultation. Luckily a consultant who knew the patient was in the hospital and kindly came down in their lunch break to see them. Good for revising 3rd year psych history stuff, mental state exam and all that. Got some good teaching too, the consultant was super helpful!

Bit of a break, had a brew with two new med students on surgery, Tim and Andrea from Aberdeen. I filled them in on A&E life, they're here for an 8 week placement. Mugs washed/back in cupboard before seeing my last patient of the day, an injured wrist after tripping over some shoes. Dangerous things footwear! Was a good day, full of interesting patients and lots of revision, haven't covered psych stuff in ages so good to dust off the cobwebs.

Back to the flat fairly early for a change. Went to start cooking dinner in the kitchen to find the Irish nursing student in my flat having tried to 'season' a cast iron frying pan = filled the kitchen up with smoke! Could barely breathe in there, let alone cook so rustled up some pesto/pasta in the adjacent flat's kitchen, proper comfort food. After that hit up the pub with Tim/Andrea and the other med student on medicine, Laura. Tim drove us down to the Sea Angling Club, apparently the place to go in Stornoway... After standing at the bar for 5mins we decided to just have a seat and get some drinks when some bar staff turned up! Again, no ale on tap. Yet to find anywhere here that does it, sad times. And their whiskey selection was all blended. It was like a working men's club, loads of dart boards, tv's on the wall, pool tables. We chatted over beers before heading to Tesco for a spot of late night shopping - Andrea needed some stuff so we all traipsed round! Tim found some reduced muffins - really nice ones for 3p each, simple things! Picked up a local paper too, interesting to read about the census figures for the islands. The graph below shows the change in population from 2001 - 2011 Census. Took me a while to realise the y-axis was numbers of people, rather than percentages!!

Population change, in actual number of people not percentage!