I am not particularly a fan of the paranormal, nor have I had any experience in this arena, but there were curious events that transpired during 3 consecutive duty nights back when I was a medical clerk rotating in OB-Gyn some years back.
On the first duty night, I was monitoring the patients in the floors. One patient was a post-op patient and her fluid output was what we were focusing on. It was consistently becoming low. Sometime after midnight, our residents gave us the go signal to do a fast drip on her, giving her adequate urine output for an hour. However, 2 hours later, she again had a low output. Our resident told us to monitor for another hour.
An hour later, we were horrified to find that her urine bag was full and that her fluids were on fast drip! None of our group mates did the fast drip, especially since we were instructed not to. There was no order in the charts so the nurses never did it. The patient and her husband said it was one of us (medical students) who did it – a tall mestizo medical student dude with colds. Not one medical clerk on duty that night fit that description. We just dismissed the incident, just thankful that nothing bad came out of it. The patient was fine. We were even kidding around that we should’ve passed a message to that mystery student to take the vital signs and note the urine output next time.
Three nights later, on our next duty night, Chris and I were the ones left in the ward that evening. Chris was doing labor watch and I was again doing the monitoring of our patients. Chris volunteered to monitor the other patient in the same ward (whom we shall call Lauren) and take her urine output since he was in the same room anyway. I was grateful, hence, I told him I’d still check up on him.
A few hours later, I went back down to check up on the patient and on Chris. I noticed there was no monitoring of Lauren’s urine output for 2 hours. We might get questioned on this. I asked Chris about it. He was uneasy telling me that for 2 consecutive hours, Lauren and her husband told him that a tall mestizo medical student dude drained the urine output. Oh, and he had colds. He wasn’t sure how to react, but just remained calm and proceeded to take her vital signs. Lauren said that the same guy already took it and told her that her BP was 110/70. Chris did it, nonetheless; it was indeed 110/70.
Interesting.
Again, 3 nights later, on our next duty night, the same tall mestizo medical student dude with colds took vital signs and output for a new patient.
It would’ve been really better had he been recording what he was monitoring.
The most interesting here was that all 3 patients he monitored on 3 different nights occupied the same bed.
This post is tagged doctors, superstitions
