- Joined
- Sep 15, 2009
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This is my first time posting in this thread. Yesterday I wanted to punch my entire hospital in the face. I've been day call since the beginning of the month, and the overnight resident got a page for a "routine ulcer" consult around 8PM. I came in that morning and before beginning rounding checked out this patient on the computer and saw that he was tachycardic, 103F temp, WBC 14. I looked at his x ray and read the report first, which said "small air foci representing ulcer at lateral foot." Okay cool. Opened up x ray...obvious gas. So the entire ED staff taking care of this patient, the radiologist, and the admitting team completely dropped the ball on this patient. This patient sat over night with sepsis and a gas infection and no one batted an eye. I went up to his room and examined him. He had a 10cm track from his plantar sub met 5 ulcer going proximally with brown murky pus coming out and bulla formation at the lateral foot. I called my attending right away and sent him a pic and then boarded him for the OR. We basically did a whole 5th ray resection, left the base. He's on vanc/zosyn. Today his white count went down a little but still very febrile. Praying we cleared everything out, and a great way to start yesterday morning!
I'm assuming you guys don't have computer access at home? We use EPIC and have home access. I like to check labs and order X-rays if I get an ulcer consult after hours.
That's happened to me TWICE with no consult until the morning. And of course neither were NPO. Very frustrating.