I failed the test today. The test to see how much medical knowledge was stuck in my brain. No one would fault me for this. I won’t get my license taken away for this. There are many people who would probably say I shouldn’t have known this in the first place.
A patient came into the clinic to see me who had had a laceration and had to get stitches, also known as sutures placed. In the emergency room, the electronic health record documentation told a tale of putting her to sleep with some sleepy medicine and closing up the cut with four neat 5-0 vicryl sutures. Here is where my hand hovered over the mouse and clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. *Ding* You know the screen. “The page is not responding. Windows is checking for a solution to the problem…” Let me guess, Windows does not have dredging up a broken fiberoptic cable on the ocean floor as a possible solution in their database.
I racked my brain. Vicryl. Vicryl. What material is that made of? Is it dissolvable or do I need to take the sutures out. If you work in the emergency room or operating room, you probably know since you use this everyday. As a pediatrician, we don’t suture people often so I don’t have that information at my fingertips. I actually visualized myself flipping through my notecards from medical school to see if that would help me remember.
I gave up.
I called the emergency room and asked the doctor there. He’s great but I’m sure he chuckled a bit. This would have been something that would have taken a two second Google search in the past. He rattled off the answer (dissolvable) and I hung up, now prepared to see my next patient.
This is the true test. How much memory do you have? How much knowledge do you know – and I mean really know. For certain. Like you’re willing to put someone’s well being in your hands for that knowledge. Fortunately I have a downloaded (and actually also a paper version that I’ve shared with the pediatrics unit) formulary (a fancy word for a catalog of all the drugs, their side effects, they doses, etc) on my cell phone. I have many medicine dosages, their trade names and generic names stored in my brain but having a double check is super important.
I think I need an extra memory card slot! (Have you watched the movie “Inside Out”? Yeah, I need to be able to tell my long term memory to recall that thought bubble.) Trust me, I will never forget that Vicryl is absorbable suture ever again.
Stay tuned for more.
(To start reading from the beginning, click here)
gratitudeactually 