Recently, I found this youtuber who is a 3rd medical Canadian resident named Siobhan. Her channel is called Violin MD. I have been binge watching her vlogs on her on call shifts lately and I find them very interesting. I get to see what a day in a doctor looks like and after watching a couple of her videos, I can appreciate more what doctors do. I see how much teamwork goes in when taking care of a patient. Also, after watching her videos, I realized that doctors do a lot of writing!
For this assignment, I decided to watch Siobhan’s “26 Hour Call Shift: Day in the Life of a Doctor, Intensive Care Unit.” Immediately at the beginning of Siobhan’s shift, there is a team meeting between residents, attending physician, nurses, dietitian, respiratory therapist, and pharmacist. As we learned in class, they performed a briefing to map out the care plan, heighten awareness of certain circumstances, and plan for unexpected with each patient. As Siobhan says in the video, the briefing takes a while since they conduct one for each patient and make sure that each staff member had a chance to give their input and recommendations.
At around 11 pm, Siobhan gets a page from a critical care response team nurse who has identified that one patient had a very low oxygen levels. Patient vitals were 120 beats per minute but blood pressure was normal. Siobhan ordered for a stat x-ray, which revealed that the patient had a collapsed lung, and the patient was placed on 100% oxygen. Immediately after assessing and treating the patient, Siobhan calls the attending physician and fellow to further discuss which course of action to take. It is interesting how the various different roles of the medical care team come together to identify a problem quickly and resolving the issue at hand as fast as they can or stabilize the patient until further consideration with other members is taken. This effective teamwork and communication were able to avoid a huge red flag.
In addition, Siobhan received an admission to the ICU from a patient got out of the operating time. The physician and anesthesiologist communicated with Siobhan about the procedure and how it went. One of the most important information disclosed was that this patient had a difficult airway resulting in it being difficult to intubate patient due to their anatomy. Siobhan shortly after states that she is definitely going to communicate this information about the patient to the morning team. This shows how Siobhan is making sure critical information is being passed on to the other team members to prepare a plan if patient needs intubation.
Overall, this video really focuses on how effective communication between staff and having teamwork can improve a patient’s care. I really enjoy watching Siobhan’s videos and hope she continues to post more about her experience as an ICU doctor.