Vigilance

I'm so disappointed. I heard today one of my favorite upper level residents got caught under the influence of drugs by one of the attendings at work. He is off to physician's rehab and whether or not he comes back is uncertain. Unfortunately, this is pretty common in anesthesia. I'm so tired of hearing how our speciality has the highest drug abuse rate of all specialties. As much as I'm tired of it though, I can't get complacent. It can happen to any of us. All I can say is, I hope it doesn't happen to me. A friend of mine today told me 1 in 8 residents. That seems high. That means somebody in my residency class will have a problem. I can already wager who that will be. "Vigilance" is supposed to be the motto of anesthesia when it comes to patients. I guess that also should be applied to how we conduct ourselves, as well. Never let your guard down.

Just the same, I'm sad he probably isn't coming back. He was really nice.

I'm on call tomorrow. It's my next-to-the-last weekend call of my intern year (Yay!!!). I hope tomorrow gives me some peace. Monday Night was crazy. I had 5 code blues, which is a record for me. It was absolute insanity from about 8pm until 5am. You just never can tell what's going to happen on call. None of the patients died that night, but two of them did the next day. It amazes me how sick people can be yet they continue to hang on. Sometimes modern medicine is not a good thing. A year ago I took an oath to do no harm, yet I'm not allowed to let a terminally ill person (in lots of pain) die unless they or the family have signed a DNR. To me, that is doing harm.