Vann Anthony Fuentes

III-B

Emergency Room Exposure Reaction Paper

Some people like the atmosphere of the emergency room. They crave the nonstop action attending to
patients who need urgent attention. I suppose that has its perks, and I can understand why it appeals to
some people. I however, took a good look around the place and noticed the lack of places to sit down
and rest. That was a bit of a letdown for me. I did notice however, that the new ER was a lot better than
the old one, and that all patients were in direct line of sight from the middle of the room, which was a
significant improvement over the old one, where I even had trouble locating my groupmates who were
interviewing a patient.

When we got there at 7:00 pm, there was really nothing to do, since everyone was busy. There was no
resident to brief us on anything, so we just talked randomly for about an hour before we got to see any
action.

About an hour later, a gunshot victim was rushed in. My groupmates took turns performing CPR on the
poor guy, who I was pretty sure was dead even before he got there. I was optimistic at first, because I’ve
seen people on TV who apparently suffered worse injuries and survived. Of course, I’m also old enough
to know that real life can sometimes be very different from what you see on TV.

Every minute that passed had me even more convinced that this person was not going to make it. What
little blood he had was spurting out of his newly acquired orifices with every chest compression. Soon, it
was clear that we were only doing CPR for protocol. There was no way this guy was still alive. The police
was there to ask the medical personnel some questions. The patient’s teary eyed folks were there too,
but quickly left.

That was quite a dramatic start to our ER exposure. I feel sorry for the guy who died, but thankful that
he gave us an experience that we’ll remember for a long time. I don’t feel like I know enough to be
working there anytime soon, but I hope to acquire the necessary knowledge to be an effective intern at
the ER. I’m not great at remembering stuff, so that kind of concerns me a bit.

I also got to assist a minor surgery of a torn scrotal sac. I thought it would be an easy procedure. Just
appose the edges and stitch. When the surgery residents cleaned out the cavity thoroughly to prevent
fournier’s gangrene, I thought to myself, “Huh. I never even thought of that. Oops.” My junior intern
friend then finished closing up nicely.