Reflection Week 7

This week was my seventh week at Memorial Hospital for clinical this session. I was

actually able to shadow in the cardiac catheterization lab. I thought it was pretty cool. They were

very fast paced and literally knocked patient after patient. I liked the fast pace. Our first patient

of the day was in for his left leg. He had blood clots, or at least that is what they thought, in his

left groin area. They were blocking circulation in his left leg, so the doctor went in through his

groin and sucked out the clots. When they got in there and started sucking out the clots the

discovered the clots were actually fat. The doctor was literally sucking fat out of this patients’

veins. They did place some stents too. I think they pulled out like ten clots. The procedure only

lasted about an hour.

The second patient we had was in for a procedure because he had a spell of chest pain

and shortness of breath so his procedure was exploratory to see what was going on. The doctor

checked his heart, lungs, and kidneys. He went in through the wrist.

I think I sat through a total of like three or four cases, but they had seven or eight for the

day. They pumped out like 2 during lunch. I think the most interesting to me while watching

these procedures was the point of entry and where the doctor was getting to. It was just so cool to

me that the doctor would go in from the groin and go all the way up to the heart or something.