How To Look Pretty For Clinical

It isn't easy, I'll tell you that. Nobody really looks their best rolling out of bed at 5 AM, pulling on our godawful uniform, and hightailing it to the hospital, but I do make an effort. I'm vain, and I'm single, and dammit I want to look my best, insofar as it is possible. It doesn't help that I have a DIFFICULT skintone. I am SERIOUSLY pale (like, porcelain pale) but without pink undertones in my skin. I'm the world's palest olive tone, the sort that LITERALLY turn green when they're sick. You can see most of my veins through my skin.

On the other hand, you do NOT want to be that girl who shows up with a ton of makeup on- you'll look silly, and you probably did your makeup under different lighting. Hospital lighting is NOT forgiving of makeup errors. There is a girl in my clinical group who seems to think that she cannot go out without bronzer. You can TELL. She looks muddy.

On that note, here's what I've found can be done in a relative haze, and still make you look human without making it obvious that you're wearing makeup.

1. MOISTURIZE. Hospitals are dry, you will be dry, invest in some good moisturizer with an SPF (for when you DO go outside), use it liberally.

2. CONCEALER, for spottiness. Make sure you test it on yourself in NATURAL light, AND under nasty halogens. This will help prevent it suddenly becoming scarily visible at the hospital, and ruining all your work.

3. FOUNDATION- if you wear it, wear as little as possible, mix it with moisturizer, and for God's sake, make damn sure it really matches your skintone.

4. BLUSH!!!!! I cannot stress how much I love blush. I recommend a very light pink for people as pale as me. Something NATURAL looking. Brush it with a really big brush over the apples of your cheeks, then dust a TINY bit on your chin and brow bones. This part might not be necessary for people who actually have color in their skin, but I find it does WONDERS for me. Makes me look human, refreshed, happy. It is also far easier to use than bronzer. DO NOT USE BRONZER. It doesn't look right under hospital lights, I don't know why. Blush is much more forgiving, and gives you color without that "i swear i was just in cancun" fakeness.

5. MASCARA- if you can use it this early in the morning. I usually go for a brown color, and use just one coat of something that will not clump. Rimmel is good. It opens up your eyes, helping you look alert.

6. Clear Eyes solution. Seriously. If you were up late writing your care plan, use this so your patient's dont know.

And that's basically my morning routine, give or take a few products depending on how alert I am. I can't help my uniform, but dammit at least I look awake!

Short post

I am spectacularly unmotivated today, and have the day off from clinical due to my instructor not having a babysitter for President's Day. I think I'll go to the gym so I don't sit around doing NOTHING.

Also, I should finish this care plan on pain.

The Drunkest Guy Yet

Last night was an interesting shift. 18 hours, two calls, which isn't bad. The first one was no big deal, (moderate concussion, easy transport, cooperative patient).
The SECOND patient was a whole different story. 3 am is never a good time to be hauled out of bed, and we knew it wasn't going to be an easy call when we could smell the alcohol from OUTSIDE the room. The patient was (sorta) conscious, but he thought it was Halloween, he kept giggling, and he repeatedly climbed out of the stairchair because "seatbelts dont belong on chairs!!!" He hadn't vomited at all, which was a blessing from a messiness standpoint, but I have no idea how he managed to drink so much and not get sick. His friends estimated that he'd had 10-15 shots in the preceeding hour, and must have JUST stopped drinking before the campus cops found him.
Once on the ambulance, he repeatedly attempted to grab my breasts while I took his blood pressure. Who knew that "no, these aren't for you" actually WORKS as a deterrant? Then he passed out, which made things easier.
Hope he's ok...KNOW he won't know better.

Hyacinth

I would just like to state, for the record, that hyacinths smell AMAZING...and that I got some at Trader Joes for 2 bucks. WHEEEEE!!!

Unexpectedly Emergent

Today I had a lovely pt. on contact precautions for MRSA colonization (no active infection), and got to follow her to the lab where they were testing her brand new internal defibrillator. What this involves is quite nerve-wracking. They sedate the patient, pace her on the T-wave, which sends her into V-fib, and then WAIT and see if the defibrillator can kick her back out of it into sinus. This was the SECOND test. The day before the test had failed, and they had to use the external paddles. This time, after ten heart-stopping seconds, she cardioverted, and all was well.
The second drama in the day unfolded about 4 minutes after I left the lab: one of my classmates came running up to say that a girl in my carpool had collapsed in the hallway, unconsious, and was being taken to the ER. Needless to say, the two of us in the carpool with her ran down to the ER, and stayed there until her discharge 4 hours later. Diagnosis? Vaso-vagal syncopy, with mild bump on the head. Basically, she stood still in a freezing room for four hours, and hadn't eaten in 6. When she walked OUT of the cath lab into the hallway, which was VERY warm, and her blood started moving again, she passed out and bumped her head. All is well, but it made for QUITE an exciting day. The best part was taking the EKG electrodes off her every 20 minutes so that she could go to the bathroom, because they had her IV running in so fast.

SPU

Today I was sent to "observe" in the Short Procedure Unit. In other hospitals this is known as the "Same Day Surgery" unit. We (me and my counterpart from the other clinical group) spent most of the morning in the Intake part of the unit, bringing patients back, orienting them to the unit, helping get them into surgical gowns, caps, sock-with-treads, et cet, then taking vital signs, and completing intake assessments. We were only TECHNICALLY supposed to be OBSERVERS, but the nurses were busy, and pretty soon we were doing 2/3 of the intakes, while the nurses were doing the urine pregnancy tests, starting IVs, giving meds, and charting. This was fine with us, as we had something to do.
The remainder of the day we went to the POST surgical area, which is also known as Recovery II. Recovery I is the PACU, where patients are brought out of anesthesia, and vitals are assured to be stable. If the patient is going to be staying, they then are admitted to a floor. If, however, they've had a tonsillectomy, or a tendon surgery, or a fixation of a broken arm, or something, often they come back down to the SPU, and stay there until they are ok to leave- not nauseous, fully consious, pain controlled, feeling ok. We helped dress people, complete "discharge teaching", brought warm blankets and snacks, and basically did all those little things that are really nice, but nobody ever gets time to do for the patients. We got profusely thanked about 40 times.
If only our patients up on the Cardiology unit would be so grateful... :-p

Clinic

Spent last night helping at a clinic downtown for non-English speakers. Our responsibilities included doing all of the vital signs and "triage" to ready patients for their appointments, and we also got to go in with the nurse practitioners and see what THEY did. The hands-down coolest part of the evening was when we got to watch the doc on duty do an ultrasound on a patient's thyroid. The patient had a VERY large goiter, something I've never seen before, with necrosis and some liquefaction in the center. The doc walked us through everything he was doing, all the abnormalities. I'm not sure this was for OUR sake, or for the sake of the two COMPLETELY USELESS medical students. They didn't know ANY anatomy, and just stood there like idiots.
It was pretty great, altogether.