Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Wednesday 18 April 2012

A day at a course...


So here I am at a course. Medicine Management. Numbers do my head in and, well dealing with medication means dealing with numbers. My choice I grant you but I still don't like it any more than before. So, you ask, what's so bad about a few numbers, well let me tell you. Picture this: doc has prescribed medication at 5mcg/kg/minute, the written order is bad enough, now have to take the patients weight into consideration. So patient weighs 70kg. Do I hear you say not so bad...
Well, just to complicate the issue a preparation of 250mg in 50ml has been prepared. So what rate should the infusion pump be set at? Aha now you get the picture.
Well the morning is over and done with and I think that I have passed the test, fingers crossed. The tutor was excellent and very helpful at prompting when we had written down the wrong answers. It was a bit comforting to discover that even some of the nurses who work in hospitals and deal with this sort of stuff all the time were struggling a bit with the calculations. At least I could remember the formula for doing the calculations. What you want over what you've got times volume over one.
Roll on this afternoon I say and the subject is pharmacology. Yay…
I was quite looking forward to the afternoon, but I think I spoke to soon. Boring. The presenter started well asking us if we wanted to have a break partway through or finish earlier. No surprises what our answer was. Better to forego the break and get away early. Well that was supposed to be the plan. He started with a wad notes which he proceeded to go through. Unfortunately I don’t think they were his notes. He kept reading from the screen and then checking that it matched his notes. And to top it off he kept harking back to how things were when he first joined the company, now let me see how long ago was it…
Not only did we not finish early he even had to skip a DVD presentation so that we could finish on time.

No comments:

Post a Comment