Patience

Just had our first patient panel. Learned a lot more about sickle cell factors, cause, analysis, and so on. *edited now that I've had more time, Saturday*

Basically, we had a doctor come in with one of his patients to discuss the onset of sickle cell disease, and then ask one of his patients, as well as a social worker, about the real-life issues regarding life with sickle-cell.

At one part of our discussion, "drug-seeking" was brought up. Drug-seeking, for those of you with little exposure to clinical/emergency work, is a type of activity where a patient seems to constantly come to an emergency room "read: frequent flyer" or complains of pain and then requests for a certain drug, such as morphine or Dilaudid. Often, patients will ask for said drug by name. Some patients are simply addicted to the drug and aren't actually suffering any sort of pain associated it. Our patient, on the other hand, had been treated for years with a variety of drugs and found that Dilaudid worked the best for her. When nurses/MDs are confronted with a direct request for a painkiller such as Dilaudid, a red flag is normally brought up regarding some sort of drug habit, which is unfortunate, because in some cases, like this one, it is actually warranted. It's an important concept to understand, especially for those of you guys going to family medicine.

It's nice to be able to view a patient's perspective once in a while. In the past, I have had patients that are so prevalent that even the staff tell me their name before I give it to them.

Well, that's enough about my experience! On to class!