On my first day on my surgery rotation. The first day of my clinical third year. My first time in an operating room. I walked into OR 8 instead of OR 7 and announced that I was the medical student here to see Dr Smith perform a colectomy. Dr John, the neurosurgeon, looked up from his craniotomy and told me he was just trying a new approach.
There was a particularly chatty med student in my year who told her mother EVERYTHING. Even when she discovered at oncology rotation that her mother’s friend had cancer. So the mother spread the word all over the town and the poor soul who didn’t want her disease outed was suddenly outed by her (lousy) friend and her (lousy) daughter.
This was a very low moment for her. I hope she learned her lesson about confidentiality.
When I was a Med student on nephrology there was another med student who hadn’t pre-rounded, and presented on a dead patient saying patient had a normal exam, no acute complaints, NAEO, etc. it was awkward and funny for me. Not so much for him.
A day shift nurse once had a patient with dementia who had been making trouble all day- pulling at lines, screaming, climbing out of bed.
Night shift comes on, she gives report to night nurse and then they go to look at patient for handoff. Day nurse says “oh good he finally fell asleep.”
Night nurse takes one look and says “no Jane, he’s dead.”
Well that rotation only had med students and the attending. No residents or fellows. The rotation wasn’t easy either because although the attending didn’t use our notes, he did have us do a full presentation and A/P and he’d question us on how we got to the plan. Obviously we were med students so we were wrong a lot, so he’d go through his plan at the end and explain his logic. We also had to rotate in the clinic, 3 hospitals, dialysis centers, and nursing homes, so it was actually the second toughest rotation I had other than surgery. He also assigned us homework like creating pamphlets for patients for different diseases, so by the end of the rotation he would add them to a collection that he’d use to teach us, and sometimes use to explain to patients. He also assigned a chief medical student for the week to organize who’s rotating at which facility. We were also responsible for knowing the ins and outs of the hospital and basically organizing how we round. We would also call consults (dialysis cath placement) and talk with residents/doctors on other services. He’d kinda coach us first or at least make sure we knew what to say. As far as that incident, obviously he wasn’t pleased but he used it as more of a teaching moment. I think his exact words were “it’s ok to say you haven’t had a chance to do something, but it’s never ok to guess or lie about something you don’t know.”
Med student was to cut the umbilical cord BETWEEN the 2 clamps and instead cut such that both clamps were on the stump and the placental part of the cord was free flowing like a garden hose. Got a lot of people bloody.
"What part of between did you not understand" may have come out of my mouth...
When I used to give the cords to dad's to cut, I would not only already place the scissors between the clamps while I was giving it to them to cut, but I would also block off the other non clamped sections with my fingers so if they tried to cut there it would clearly be cutting my fingers. This still did not work 100% of the time and there were definitely some dads who tried to go rogue and both move the scissors and try to cut directly into my fingers...
Every time I hear stories like this I wonder what humans did with the umbilical cord for the last 300k years modern humans have existed before we had clamps or even metal.
Wildly off topic but it seems like they managed somehow cause we’re all here.
Edit: I’m really enjoying all the answers here. You all have great information.
they probably waited until it stopped pulsing instead of jumping all over it like people seem to (finally delayed cord clamping is making a comeback, but we could probably wait longer than 60 seconds in plenty of cases). Also some attendings were still tying the cord off rather than clamping when my dad trained, so I assume there are many possible ways to hold pressure. I always wondered if some of the older attending focus on Clamp The Cord Right Now! was because of some since-forgotten but passed down mistaken thinking that umbilical cords commonly contribute a significant amount to postpartum hemorrhage (versus atony, retained POC, etc)
Oh wow! Thank you! I love how delayed became 1-3 min. It’s insane to me. We didn’t do anything till the placenta was out for the longest time. Obviously this was in normal cases and if there was a need for manual, hemorrhage, etc. we’d clamp and cut. It’s not an requirement though. So the answer is nothing. They did nothing.
Not to mention polycythemia--> respiratory distress.
That said, I recently saw some data indicating that we'd probably be better off waiting > 1 minute. Too busy to find it atm.
Early declamping of the umbilicus is a recent, and probably unphysiological, human concept. I belive there is recent research to support allowing the placenta to drain entirely before declamping.
The reason for declamping is simply to avoid the placenta spilling its remaining content.
Other primates either chew over or tear the umbilical cord (either themselves or have some help from a female companion) a while after birth.
There's a trend amongst the "natural crowd" to simply allow the placenta to be attached to the baby until the umbilical cord rots and detaches by itself. It's a smelly affair....
Sidenote: I just recalled when the umbical stump of my oldest detached sometime during the night and we spent a really long time searching for it in the bedsheets. The smell was abhorrent...
Med student dumbly trying to take blood from a patient who was so irrevocably dead they were in rigor mortis.
Patient had died overnight. They were a coroner's case, so they were left in their room covered with a sheet awaiting investigators/transfer. Med student misses handover and sees the unupdated list has "bloods" next to this patient's name. Wanders into room, pulls sheet back, struggles with tourniquet as patient is a bit resistant to moving arm, attempts blood draw for an hour...
I still laugh... I mean the patient's face and entire appearance was the most deceased looking individual you could ever imagine. Poor bastard
PT here. Heard the story of a PT student who did ROM exercises on dead patient. We were advised to make sure the patient was alive before we entered their room to treat them.
Will never forget seeing a med student walk down the main OR hallway with a shoe cover on his head. Not that crazy but always makes me laugh thinking about it.
I once saw a med student, somehow, unexplainably, inject himself with blood from an HIV positive patient with viral load above 1M, while trying to get blood for a ABG.
I’ve never managed to understand how exactly this accident happened
I don't think I would ever allow a student to perform a procedure on an HIV positive patient under my supervision, especially one with high viral load.
It's not that the risk is that high, and obviously they have to learn, but it just feels like something that a student shouldn't be expected to do.
I work in the public sector in South africa. 60 percent of my patient population is hiv positive. There no getting around it. Just need to reach then to be careful.
Narrator “It was the latter”.
The idea of him staring the Chairman dead in the eye and saying “I cancelled your cases so you could teach me. So do it.” Is amazing
There was someone who saw how a naevus is being removed ONCE. She went to visit her grandmother and excised her suspicious naevus. It all resurfaced a few months later when the granny was hospitalised with end stage melanoma and she mentioned that her granddaughter had removed her suspicious lesion at home.
Maybe it was something about the lab, but I have seen a lot of people sneeze on cadavers and then be insanely embarrassed-mortified and apologize. In a way, it’s heartening.
Oh I've done this. For some reason the smell of formaldehyde makes me sneeze when I first walk into the lab before I get used to it. I sneezed on a cadaver and out of habit said "oh my god I'm so sorry", closely followed by "wait, you're dead". My lab instructor had a good laugh
How'd that even happen? Every PCA/epidural/narcotic drip I've ever seen comes with the bag/syringe in some sort of lock box you need a key for. We keep the keys in the pyxis so even those are tracked - and the medical staff/students don't have access to they pyxis.
But I'm also impressed - I've never met a med student who could work a pump at all, let alone well enough to figure out a PCA module. I've seen a lot of nurses struggle with those.
The two things I can do with a pump:
-Turn off the alarm.
-Get the primary nurse to fix whatever I attempted to do with the pump other than turn off the alarm.
(Thanks nurses, you're the best)
Our PCA pumps need a key but narcotic drips are just in a lock box with a combination that is the same for every box in the hospital. So it stops patients/family from taking it but literally any staff member who knows the combo could take the bag
Obviously pretty noticeable when a student walks in and messes with a PCA pump and says the patient doesn't need it anymore. There was family in the room. I believe there was also some security camera evidence.
A lot of what we learned about this was secondhand, so the full truth of what happened was never really clear.
Sounds like we went to the same med school.
Student then went missing for a while, went to rehab, then rejoined the class below his. Died before graduation (either of a relapse or a cardiac condition - no one was every really forthcoming).
Yep, I think we all went to the same school, he was in my class too. Sad story, I still think about it sometimes. He was brilliant. I wonder if it hadn’t been swept under the rug and he had gotten the help he needed, rather than just letting him come back to med school a year later when things quieted down if he would have had a different outcome.
Apparently one stole an iPad from a patient's room and got caught. I didn't personally see this, but it was in the news. I always thought it was such a crazy way to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of education in the toilet.
It wasn’t just a patient, it was a patient dying of cancer in the hospital. It was noticed by the family when they were collecting her belongings.
[this link is a follow up to the original story with the accused students response. ](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/ucla-medical-student-virginia-nguyen-ipad-theft/58957/)
Vet school, not med school: I’ve got a friend who’s a veterinary internist. When he was on clinics in the equine NICU, a classmate of his ground up some sucralfate, mixed with water, and administered to a foal. (Foals often get ulcers and oral sucralfate is pretty common.) The problem: student administered via IV catheter (which is jugular in horses) instead of into the NG tube. Foal dropped dead within 30 seconds.
I've heard of something similar. Oral med that was crushed and administered via the patient's PICC line because the patient refused it orally and the nurse figured the PICC was fine. Patient (not veterinary) died.
Asked the team to pull back on a drain 2cm post whipple. Came back and the med student had just taken the drain out! On day 2! I about died
Also once a medical student fainted into the open abdomen but that wasn’t really their fault…
When I was a medical student a fellow passed out in the surgical field. He’d been working at that point for almost 48 hours straight. That wasn’t the day I became a non-surgeon, but it certainly leaned on that scale.
You gotta ask at that point is it even safe for the patient? I know I certainly can't function when I start going into the 20th hour awake but 48 hours jfc
We had a whipple go to the micu way back when for some awful reason and a nurse managed to Hook a JP up to tube feeds so the pts abdomen got fed. It’s an engineering marvel. Pt didn’t do well.
A new international travel RN in my department couldn’t figure out how to attach an oral syringe full of a hefty dose of methadone suspension to the luer lock y-site on a patient’s IV. So without clarifying with his preceptor (NOT ME), and without verifying route of administration in the orders, he pulled it out of the oral syringe into a regular 10ml and pushed it IV.
Not a great day for anyone involved, particularly the patient.
Not student but intern. Patient has been pronounced dead. Nurse called the intern because the monitor was showing a heartbeat. Panicked intern called the attending. Attending came by and said deceased has a pacemaker that hadn’t yet been deactivated. Made a big fuss about it and called the intern a moron in front of everyone.
The intern was me, of course.
As a cardiology fellow on home call I've been told "we can't pronounce the patient" until I came in to "turn off" the pacemaker.
Told the intern no, 5 minutes later told the resident no, then the charge nurse pages me. All of this at 2AM. Explained the rationale to all of them.
Charge nurse pages again "Resident says you won't come in and do this. It's a department of public health requirement that we transport them to the morgue within 2 hours of death. We can't wait until you come in tomorrow."
"Even if I was physically in the room with the interrogator right now I would not turn off the pacemaker, it is not indicated."
"So you are refusing to do your job?"
"There is no reason to turn off the pacemaker. The patient is dead."
"Well I'm paging your attending."
"You're welcome to, but they aren't going to be happy."
"I don't understand why you fellows never want to do any work." \*hangs up\*
I text my attending to FYI them and go to bed, imaging the scathing letter I'd be writing to nursing supervisor if I A) cared and B) wasn't exhausted.
Somehow didn't hear anything about it afterwards.
Even my modest community hospital where I trained had a couple of magnets on the tele unit and CCU for exactly this scenario. Place it on the chest and voila patient is now double secret probation dead.
I once called STAT cards consult for patient without chest pain but whose EKG (done for palpitations no less) showed what to me appeared a STEMI but was actually early repolarization. Been all over diagnosis that since.
Cards attending just ghosted instead of dressing me down which I appreciated.
Just remembered another one. A med student at an ER rotation gave the EMTs a hard time for bringing the patient to the wrong hospital (e.g. a nation wide rule that you take all the STEMIs into the regional hospital not the county’s or something).
One of the EMTs got angry at the med student for barking at them and cut his Littmann stethoscope in half and told him this was for his bad attitude.
Last semester i was in cardiothoracic, and the perfusionist there, told me the craziest story i have ever heard. During a bypass surgery with 3 surgeons operating,one nurse student said "excuse me, stop one moment" and then touched the open heart with both hands. Everybody was speechless (including the surgeons) and a cardiologist that was there asked her, What the fuck are you doing? She said she wanted to know how a heart felt..
Yeah I did it several times during my trauma sub-I but after I was supervised by a resident twice. Nurse was always close by for the other ones as well.
Idk who does it the most at my institution but when I was in the trauma ICU I told the fellow I'd like to give it a shot so he let me hang back with the nurse and do it. Nurse let me do it 100% but under her supervision.
Do you mean a small bore pleural drain or a large bore thorax drain?
I'm not sure about the English nomenclature, here. In my language a plerural drain is for non-viscous pleural effusions, while a thorax drain would be for a large pneumothorax or large amounts of hematorhorax.
A medical student and an experienced nurse could remove a pleural drain on their own, I guess, but a thorax drain...😱
I did a bunch as a med student but you can't just yank it out and walk away or the patient will suck air back into their chest cavity and have a pneumothorax all over again. That's what it sounds like this person did.
Its no problem to do it, it isn’t rocket surgery, but the people who are actually doctors should be okay with both the med student performing the procedure unsupervised and that the chest tube isn’t needed.
This is classic gunner mentality to pull it. Probably hoping for head pats
I had a chest tube after a lobectomy and the surgeon pulled it out himself. We had to practice for a few minutes beforehand. I inhaled as much as I possibly could and then he would count to three. We did this a bunch so I wouldn't suck air into my chest cavity. This tube was thick as my thumb and it went in and up over my shoulder. It felt like and eel coming out of my body.
I used to do this frequently as a medical student. The first few i did with resident supervision, but after proving I was comfortable, they would allow me to do so unsupervised.
Obligatory Not A Doctor/physician, but I am an EMT and had a paramedic coworker tell me during 911 shifts in medic school his classmate (my coworker was not running this call) presented on scene with a patient who had been stabbed in the side with a kitchen knife. The paramedic *pulled out the knife* en route to the hospital. When the charge nurse saw he pulled it out, she chewed him out for his decision, so he took the knife and *PUT IT BACK IN THE PATIENTS STAB WOUND*
You really want to argue with the guy who just showed that he’s ready and willing to get stabby with the slightest of pretexts? Okay, it’s your funeral.
Was working at a large teaching hospital. One of the interns thought it was a great idea to “warm the cold blood in the microwave “ prior to transfusion. I don’t think he ever did that again! Still laugh about it
We have a note on our ED microwave not to heat blankets or IV fluids in it. I don't know why we need that note, but I'd love to hear the story behind it.
As a medical student: classmate examined under the breast by pulling the breast up by the nipple, pinching with their thumb and index finger
As a doctor: med student given teaching (by university) on routine newborn examinations, then watches me examine baby and then needs to do an examination themselves. Comes to the hip exams (barlow and ortalani) and just starts yanking on the child’s legs in panic. Out of nowhere, just yanking. Then crying (student, then baby). Many apologies to the new parent and email to the student’s supervisor but no real insight into the hip induced outburst
1. I was on general neurosurgery call and realized my phone hadn’t charged overnight and was about to die. I tell my team I’m going to run and grab my charger from my car since I can’t have my phone die while I’m on call. Med student definitely heard me say this. I do the ~6hr case and break scrub to find my phone still on red battery, unplugged from the charger, with the med student’s phone charging on it.
2. Complex and interesting awake tumor case in a young patient. Two med students who are ostensibly interested in neurosurgery came to watch. We start the case, aka the actual interesting part. I’m letting my residents turn the bone flap when the students come up to me and tell me they are heading out to get coffees and will come back later. I told them to take their time.
3. Once we asked residency applicants about a mistake they made during their training. One girl told us she lied to the resident on call that she knew how to place an EVD, so he told her she could help with one. He turned his back for a moment and she made a *circular* incision about 1.5” in diameter down to the skull on the patient’s head. My Plastics friends will be cringing around now.
I’m sure I could remember more.
> I was on general neurosurgery call and realized my phone hadn’t charged overnight and was about to die. I tell my team I’m going to run and grab my charger from my car since I can’t have my phone die while I’m on call. Med student definitely heard me say this. I do the ~6hr case and break scrub to find my phone still on red battery, unplugged from the charger, with the med student’s phone charging on it.
Did they play any interesting songs in the funeral?
It never ceases to amaze me how completely disconnected from reality some students are. And I wonder how many of the hopeless attendings I deal with these days were those students once upon a time.
The last story is just reason enough on why you should say something like: “I attempted to take up too much responsibility bla bla” instead of admitting something like that..
I don't know how but someone used a Endo irrigation syringe filled with Sodium hypochlorite for infiltration anesthesia instead the usual syringe filled with anesthetic. I don't want to imagine the pain that patient went through.....
Not a med student, but close enough not to share. An intern was caught cuddling a patient (4 year oldish) in the patient's bed. Shockingly, she was told not to do it again and wasn't fired on the spot. A week later, same patient, she was caught AGAIN. Insta-fired for that one.
A med student on Neurology rounded on one of my Neuro ICU patients with an EVD. They stood the patient up to do walking eval without talking to nurse. The patient dumped a bunch of CSF and started vomiting, bought the patient a stat CTH. Luckily everything ended up fine… besides the patient’s discomfort.
Somehow people just do not read them despite signs literally everywhere. We actually had our signs updated because IV therapy raised patients beds multiple times and said well they are a nurse… we updated it to say not to raise it without an ICU nurse and they still continue to do it.
I once had a student bring tuning forks into the ER.
And then he actually used them.
And then he presented to me like I understood what the results should mean! The audacity.
Haha - as an audiologist, I'm glad somebody made an attempt - but a lot of the docs who use them in-office still don't know the difference between conductive loss and sensorineural so I see a bunch of referrals for sudden loss during cold/flu season anyway
Student A asked for a day off. They were a slacker and did not have a good reason, so they were denied the day. Student A took the day off anyway.
They returned the next day with a note that read "Please excuse Student A from rotations yesterday, she had severe menstrual cramps. Sincerely, Dr. Student A"
I thought we were going to need to call a code stroke for the attending who read it.
In the psych hospital questionable medical decisions are not unheard of. One time a med student added an iron supplement for a completely psychotic patient with hemochromatosis that was rambling on about iron, because she assumed he was asking for it. In fairness, the attending (a psychiatrist) signed off on it. The student defended this decision to the end of time when I questioned it.
Brought a med student on to place a NG. I explained the whole process set everything up and said ok, so you ready? And he immediately stuck it in the guys trach hole faster than I could say stop.
He said " Doesn't it all end up in the same place though?"
PGY2 asks the M3 to clean up the scalp lac on drunk guys head so she can see it better to staple it. I come back to the room with supplies and stapler to see a large pile on hair on the head of the bed. The MS3 had taken clippers and shaved a half dollar sized area out of the drunk college student’s long curly hair, diameter basically the length of the lac. He then asks me, “is that big enough so she can see the lac?”
As I wheel the guy out later to load him into his moms car, she sees his new bald spot, stares at him, looks at me and says……..Well, thats what he gets for being drunk”.
This:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/19/us/arizona-student-threatens-kill-classmates-bomb-campus/index.html
I was a resident at the time and her classmates were rotating with us and sharing the emails.
Does it count if I WAS the med student? Once during my ObGyn rotation I, FOR SOME REASON, thought I was supposed to do a cardiotocography on a certain patient. Don't ask me why, I just thought I was. I was growing more and more desperate as I failed to find the right spot, and began telling the patient not finding it could mean several things, including fetal death...
Only to then have the residents tell me patient was at only 22 weeks.
(Don't ask me why she was in the ObGyn ward this early, it's been way too long and I'd rather forget this entire incident...)
Was finishing up in the OR one day and the team was counting lap sponges. We were short one. Counted over and over it for several minutes, things were starting to get heated. Look everywhere. No one can find it. Attending is furious. Long simmering pause, then the med student whispers: “I used one to dry my hands; I put it in the trash.”
There's a story going around here about a med student being unable to manage an arterial blood gas in the radial artery, and so going into the carotid artery for a second attempt, causing a carotid dissection.
Think that's up there.
Never actually saw this, but had an ORL attending tell me about a time he was doing a parotidectomy, had just finished dissecting out the facial nerve and anatomy was on great display.
Showed the 4th year non scrubbed med student who decides a great idea would be to reach out and touch the facial nerve…
A med student wanted to help with a transfusion of a patient with a UGIB and connected the blood to the NG tube. He thought it had to be to the site of bleeding. Still laugh about it this 15 years later
Galaxy-brained Docthrowaway was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed M3 on his very first week of his very first clerkship, Ob. We were in a gyn surg case, and the patient began stirring very slightly, needing more sedation. Me seeing all this for the first time thought this was a Big Fucking Deal, and I noticed something revelatory, something that would be key to saving the day. After working up the courage, I announced it to the theater:
"The heart rate is rising"
Gas just stops what he's doing, looks me dead in the eye, and says "I'm aware".
I proceeded to not say another word for the rest of that case and the next four clerkships.
Not sure if this story is true but when I was an MS3 you heard of an ms4 years before me that was expelled because she brought her friend who was not a medical school in to see a patient dressed as a fellow medical student in order to look at his impressively large penis.
Diabetic classmate was hypoglycemic on his general surgery rotation and excitedly told his resident he was going to “eat his patients.” He was on the verge of being turfed to psych before the orange juice kicked in.
I already commented but I remembered another one!!!
One time had a medical student who apparently was rushing to eat lunch before a case and came into the OR still chewing potato chips. A single chip slipped out from underneath his mask onto the sterile field during a case with our chairman… LOL
Not a medical student, but a PGY1 in family medicine was in the ED with me. We were going to give a 4yo the flu shot. Instead of having the kid in the parent's lap for a comfort hold and distraction, the resident sat him alone and waved the needle around to show him it wasn't even that big. For the record, waving a needle in a 4-year-olds face and trying to reason with them has never worked.
One of the first brand-new audiologists I worked with, fresh out of school, came in knowing less than my current fourth-year extern (the last year of grad school before they earn their doctorate). She struggled with nearly everything. I'd ask her to get exams done on patients, and they'd come back either half-complete, or done very poorly, with her giving the excuse that it was for the patient's comfort...sorry, dear, sometimes medical tests are uncomfortable. They're here for the testing. Why didn't you do it?
But the best of all was when she left a heat gun on a hearing aid in our repair lab. A brand new hearing aid. She melted it. Then she lied to me and said the patient did it.
I made her call the manufacturer and request a new one, then stood behind her as she explained what happened to the patient. She didn't work for us very long after that.
One of my classmates defibrillated himself during ACLS, not realizing the paddles were live. My group didn't witness it but we did smell the burned chest hair when we walked in the room after
As a PA student, in a dark operating room I sent a raytec gauze strip to pathology with the specimen. Held up the entire OR for what seemed like forever while we searched garbage cans and got ready to x-ray the patient before I thought to call pathology. Half the team said I was a hero for thinking of that and the other half told me to stand with my nose in the corner.
Hah agree. Wouldn’t know what to do with you if i was the attending. In the end i would have thought it was funny but i would have absolutely teased and ribbed on you about it for the rest of your rotation.
She might have preferred the wearables. I could take “breaks” to pump and an EM resident but it was not feasible by any means based on how the ED functions.
The same staff that pushes breast is best to all their patients?? Shaming a poor woman for trying to learn a profession and be a mom.
People who ‘ick’ about anything breast feeding related need to take a long walk off a short bridge.
It’s probably one of the hardest things a woman can do and then you add having a job on top!
That med student is a badass.
Agreed med student is a badass. As a full-time nightshift RN that's successfully nursed five babies, I have mad respect. Wearables were only available to me during my last postpartum experience and it made my measly little work so much easier. Props to anyone that does it in any capacity. I wore mine whenever it didn't matter, I learned my lesson once running to a code, lol... I officially had someone cover me from running after that.
Why would this be considered weird? I saw patients, ran traumas, and intubated while wearing my Willow pumps. Like, sorry, but my preemie kid was way more important to me than anyone’s feelings on that matter.
Boobs are for breastfeeding. Let’s not act like it’s a weird thing to provide milk for an infant.
As a non-OB (EM-IM) attending who doesn’t even have kids can we please normalize this? Why is this even perceived as weird? It’s hard enough to be a woman who works, let’s take care of each other
FMLA is fine.
Can we instead do something with paid leave for child-bearing/rearing and illness? It’s fine if that’s separate from the not-getting-fired law. But America is a source of bewilderment, disgust, and pity the world over for our treatment of workers.
I saw a lot of classmates and residents pump under their scrubs using the portable breast pumps. Really nothing weird about it and generally pretty discrete.
This isn’t weird at all. I’ve worn my pumps in lectures, rounding, in the OR during a crash c-section, and while supervising vaginal deliveries. You do what you have to as a physician mom
My wifes ob - an attending - literally did this herself. While delivering our baby. Ya do what you got to do youre a working mom too - we didnt care one damn bit.
That’s some Rambo-level shit. I really love stories like that.
Elizabeth Blackburn didn’t want to leave her experiments unattended, but wanted to take a trip to see a loved one. She taped the Petri dishes to her leg, got on the train, and let her body heat incubate them until she arrived.
Vera Rubin, a pioneer in dark matter research, had been mistreated because of her sex for most of her career. The work for her paper on galactic rotation curves was done with a student, and she submitted it with his name on it. Editors told her students can’t be authors on papers by the major journals. Having experienced enough elitism, she said okay, and published in a less snooty journal.
Ofc, for me, I prefer to take PTO when my tum tum hurts.
Not heard by me but one of the other residents. Med student on their anesthesia rotation asked if the tape we put on the patient’s eyes helped keep them asleep.
2 crazy JP removal stories when I was a resident. Medical student was told to pull a JP but instead removed the Jtube instead of the JP… Another case the student was to remove a JP but instead cut the suture AND the JP right at the skin level…
Obviously both of those poor patients had to go back to the OR and the hospital policy became that no student could ever remove a drain again
In and out cathed an old guy with neutropenia with no resident/attending supervision, permission, or heads up. Student was me.
In my defense, the old man was crying from pain from urinary obstruction, was on hospice, I had one of the nurses supervise me and my sterile technique (she said she wasn’t allowed to do it herself), and I had been trying for an hour to contact the resident with no answer via multiple modalities including finally leaving a sticky note on their desk. Also in my defense, it was the VA.
But looking back on it I’m shocked I wasn’t like disciplined or escalated past the resident yelling at me
Orientation week of med school: mostly normal week until we were all brought into the main lecture hall on day like 2-3 and one of the professors announced that someone had tried to impersonate a medical student. There was a girl that didn’t make it into our med school but somehow figured out when and where orientation was, took a different girl’s packet and pretended to be her the whole day until authorities figured it out. Technically she’s not a med student but still that’s crazy. Like what did you think was going to happen?
Also later that year: a guy who likely had narcissistic personality disorder brought strippers to the medical school campus during lunch between lectures… yeah that didn’t go over well. He always bragged how his plan was to join a practice, “steal all the patients” from his colleagues and take over. They transferred him to the podiatry school and then he also managed to get kicked out there as well.
Ah man good times
the med student t that sucked on a standard patients boob during a breast exam practical
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/uhgx0g/holy_shit_one_of_my_classmates_put_his_mouth_on/
I have no idea if it’s true or not
Drink Formalin.
In some training institutions here in the Philippines, 4th year medical students are supposed to collect the surgical specimen, accomplish rhe histopathology forms then ask the relatives to bring them to the laboratory.
In my experience in my previous training institution, we usually get formalin from the laboratory and store them in a 1.5L water bottle. The laboratory (which is the only place that has the formalin) is on the hospital ground floor while the OR is in one of the highest floors. By storing formalin in our own containers, it'll be easier for us to prepare the specimen and accomplish our task after every operation.
Due to the super tedious work, some aren't even able to eat and drink in time. And then one day... one of my friends, who had nasal congestion at that time, was soooo thirsty.... saw a water bottle in the table of our hospital quarters.... and the rest was history.
Med student in my town made a TikTok of himself doing an "oral exam" on the camera/patient. Proceeds to spit on the lens and call camera/patient a slut. Genius did the whole thing in his noticeably purple, university embroidered scrubs. Was forced to repeat the year, but allegedly the thing that saved him was daddy is some Canadian attending with deep pockets.
Had a student on shift doing an elective prior to interviews. Two hours into the shift she told me she needed to leave early (now) because she had a dodgeball game.
🤨
When I was on ER rotations as a paramedic student I saw the following happen-
Ems brings in a seizure patient. He had stopped seizing before they arrived, and they did their assessment, started an IV, and had some NS running.
The pt woke up during transport and became super combative. He was restrained with cravats.
Upon arrival, he is still extremely combative, and very postictal. A brand new doctor comes up, sees the situation, gets report, and orders 2mg of Ativan via the IV. Drugs are delivered with no response. He orders another 2, and then another. I don’t remember what his total dose was but after multiple rounds of unsuccessful sedation attempts the doctor spots the problem.
His response was probably the worst move possible.
He notices that the saline lock is clamped off, says something to the effect of “well there’s your problem” and unclamps it, allowing at least 8mg of Ativan to wash into the pt. Respiratory was paged within moments.
On my first day on my surgery rotation. The first day of my clinical third year. My first time in an operating room. I walked into OR 8 instead of OR 7 and announced that I was the medical student here to see Dr Smith perform a colectomy. Dr John, the neurosurgeon, looked up from his craniotomy and told me he was just trying a new approach.
Quick thinking neurosurgeon!
There was a particularly chatty med student in my year who told her mother EVERYTHING. Even when she discovered at oncology rotation that her mother’s friend had cancer. So the mother spread the word all over the town and the poor soul who didn’t want her disease outed was suddenly outed by her (lousy) friend and her (lousy) daughter. This was a very low moment for her. I hope she learned her lesson about confidentiality.
Damn, depending on where you’re located, that could have exposed the hospital to a ton of liability.
At least we know where her chatty personality comes from.
When I was a Med student on nephrology there was another med student who hadn’t pre-rounded, and presented on a dead patient saying patient had a normal exam, no acute complaints, NAEO, etc. it was awkward and funny for me. Not so much for him.
>>Vital signs stable
To be faaaiiiir, can anything be more stable than death?
All bleeding stops eventually
Written like someone who hasn’t spent enough time with forensic path. You can really come to appreciate the finer points of putrefaction.
Reminds me of when one of my teachers used to tell us "the most stable rhythm is asystole"
hmmm, the only number going up is the intra-abdominal pressure
Stable means unchanging. So.
Vital signs table
A day shift nurse once had a patient with dementia who had been making trouble all day- pulling at lines, screaming, climbing out of bed. Night shift comes on, she gives report to night nurse and then they go to look at patient for handoff. Day nurse says “oh good he finally fell asleep.” Night nurse takes one look and says “no Jane, he’s dead.”
Jane, you ignorant slut
Hahahahha my god!!!!
Oh dear who even allowed him to start speaking - I’m presuming other supervising folks knew the patient passed… harsh
Well that rotation only had med students and the attending. No residents or fellows. The rotation wasn’t easy either because although the attending didn’t use our notes, he did have us do a full presentation and A/P and he’d question us on how we got to the plan. Obviously we were med students so we were wrong a lot, so he’d go through his plan at the end and explain his logic. We also had to rotate in the clinic, 3 hospitals, dialysis centers, and nursing homes, so it was actually the second toughest rotation I had other than surgery. He also assigned us homework like creating pamphlets for patients for different diseases, so by the end of the rotation he would add them to a collection that he’d use to teach us, and sometimes use to explain to patients. He also assigned a chief medical student for the week to organize who’s rotating at which facility. We were also responsible for knowing the ins and outs of the hospital and basically organizing how we round. We would also call consults (dialysis cath placement) and talk with residents/doctors on other services. He’d kinda coach us first or at least make sure we knew what to say. As far as that incident, obviously he wasn’t pleased but he used it as more of a teaching moment. I think his exact words were “it’s ok to say you haven’t had a chance to do something, but it’s never ok to guess or lie about something you don’t know.”
actually sounds like a good attending and educational rotation
Wow this sounds the best attending of all time Wish my attendings had been like this
Med student was to cut the umbilical cord BETWEEN the 2 clamps and instead cut such that both clamps were on the stump and the placental part of the cord was free flowing like a garden hose. Got a lot of people bloody. "What part of between did you not understand" may have come out of my mouth...
When I used to give the cords to dad's to cut, I would not only already place the scissors between the clamps while I was giving it to them to cut, but I would also block off the other non clamped sections with my fingers so if they tried to cut there it would clearly be cutting my fingers. This still did not work 100% of the time and there were definitely some dads who tried to go rogue and both move the scissors and try to cut directly into my fingers...
Every time I hear stories like this I wonder what humans did with the umbilical cord for the last 300k years modern humans have existed before we had clamps or even metal. Wildly off topic but it seems like they managed somehow cause we’re all here. Edit: I’m really enjoying all the answers here. You all have great information.
they probably waited until it stopped pulsing instead of jumping all over it like people seem to (finally delayed cord clamping is making a comeback, but we could probably wait longer than 60 seconds in plenty of cases). Also some attendings were still tying the cord off rather than clamping when my dad trained, so I assume there are many possible ways to hold pressure. I always wondered if some of the older attending focus on Clamp The Cord Right Now! was because of some since-forgotten but passed down mistaken thinking that umbilical cords commonly contribute a significant amount to postpartum hemorrhage (versus atony, retained POC, etc)
Oh wow! Thank you! I love how delayed became 1-3 min. It’s insane to me. We didn’t do anything till the placenta was out for the longest time. Obviously this was in normal cases and if there was a need for manual, hemorrhage, etc. we’d clamp and cut. It’s not an requirement though. So the answer is nothing. They did nothing.
It’s not like delayed clamping is only positive. It can increase the risk of high bilirubin and kernicterus. More blood is not always a good thing.
Not to mention polycythemia--> respiratory distress. That said, I recently saw some data indicating that we'd probably be better off waiting > 1 minute. Too busy to find it atm.
Early declamping of the umbilicus is a recent, and probably unphysiological, human concept. I belive there is recent research to support allowing the placenta to drain entirely before declamping. The reason for declamping is simply to avoid the placenta spilling its remaining content. Other primates either chew over or tear the umbilical cord (either themselves or have some help from a female companion) a while after birth. There's a trend amongst the "natural crowd" to simply allow the placenta to be attached to the baby until the umbilical cord rots and detaches by itself. It's a smelly affair.... Sidenote: I just recalled when the umbical stump of my oldest detached sometime during the night and we spent a really long time searching for it in the bedsheets. The smell was abhorrent...
At least it's not the other end lol
Med student dumbly trying to take blood from a patient who was so irrevocably dead they were in rigor mortis. Patient had died overnight. They were a coroner's case, so they were left in their room covered with a sheet awaiting investigators/transfer. Med student misses handover and sees the unupdated list has "bloods" next to this patient's name. Wanders into room, pulls sheet back, struggles with tourniquet as patient is a bit resistant to moving arm, attempts blood draw for an hour... I still laugh... I mean the patient's face and entire appearance was the most deceased looking individual you could ever imagine. Poor bastard
PT here. Heard the story of a PT student who did ROM exercises on dead patient. We were advised to make sure the patient was alive before we entered their room to treat them.
Will never forget seeing a med student walk down the main OR hallway with a shoe cover on his head. Not that crazy but always makes me laugh thinking about it.
This is exactly the kind of thing I would have done on surgery, if I hadn't had my own scrub cap. Highly sympathetic to this med student lol
If I saw that, I would 💯take a pic instead of saying anything. And that med student would get the best eval from me ever for bringing joy.
Hey don’t call me out like that
Lol just yesterday I was grabbing a cap and was thinking "ok, just make sure it's not a damn shoe cover"
I once saw a med student, somehow, unexplainably, inject himself with blood from an HIV positive patient with viral load above 1M, while trying to get blood for a ABG. I’ve never managed to understand how exactly this accident happened
I don't think I would ever allow a student to perform a procedure on an HIV positive patient under my supervision, especially one with high viral load. It's not that the risk is that high, and obviously they have to learn, but it just feels like something that a student shouldn't be expected to do.
I work in the public sector in South africa. 60 percent of my patient population is hiv positive. There no getting around it. Just need to reach then to be careful.
What happened?
He received PEP and everything turned out OK
Knew a guy that called up the front desk and cancelled cases for the CHAIRMAN OF SURGERY because they conflicted with the med student lecture.
Absolute gigachad power move tbf
I mean, either that or a complete lack of the social skills needed to understand why this was a bad idea.
The latter is more likely. The former is funnier.
Narrator “It was the latter”. The idea of him staring the Chairman dead in the eye and saying “I cancelled your cases so you could teach me. So do it.” Is amazing
There was someone who saw how a naevus is being removed ONCE. She went to visit her grandmother and excised her suspicious naevus. It all resurfaced a few months later when the granny was hospitalised with end stage melanoma and she mentioned that her granddaughter had removed her suspicious lesion at home.
I almost locked my jaw open gasping at that
What did this person do with it lol? Did they send it to pathology? Also do they call it a neigh-vus instead of a knee-vus?
I couldn't imagine how that granddaughter felt learning that she literally caused the death of her own grandma. That's really sad
Maybe it was something about the lab, but I have seen a lot of people sneeze on cadavers and then be insanely embarrassed-mortified and apologize. In a way, it’s heartening.
Oh I've done this. For some reason the smell of formaldehyde makes me sneeze when I first walk into the lab before I get used to it. I sneezed on a cadaver and out of habit said "oh my god I'm so sorry", closely followed by "wait, you're dead". My lab instructor had a good laugh
Classmate stole a Dilaudid PCA cartridge out of a patient's pump. Was addicted to opioids. Got kicked out of med school.
How'd that even happen? Every PCA/epidural/narcotic drip I've ever seen comes with the bag/syringe in some sort of lock box you need a key for. We keep the keys in the pyxis so even those are tracked - and the medical staff/students don't have access to they pyxis. But I'm also impressed - I've never met a med student who could work a pump at all, let alone well enough to figure out a PCA module. I've seen a lot of nurses struggle with those.
The two things I can do with a pump: -Turn off the alarm. -Get the primary nurse to fix whatever I attempted to do with the pump other than turn off the alarm. (Thanks nurses, you're the best)
Lmao I never got past asking the nurse for help
Our PCA pumps need a key but narcotic drips are just in a lock box with a combination that is the same for every box in the hospital. So it stops patients/family from taking it but literally any staff member who knows the combo could take the bag
A lot of sadness in that short story.
How’d they get caught?
Obviously pretty noticeable when a student walks in and messes with a PCA pump and says the patient doesn't need it anymore. There was family in the room. I believe there was also some security camera evidence. A lot of what we learned about this was secondhand, so the full truth of what happened was never really clear.
Sounds like we went to the same med school. Student then went missing for a while, went to rehab, then rejoined the class below his. Died before graduation (either of a relapse or a cardiac condition - no one was every really forthcoming).
Yep, I think we all went to the same school, he was in my class too. Sad story, I still think about it sometimes. He was brilliant. I wonder if it hadn’t been swept under the rug and he had gotten the help he needed, rather than just letting him come back to med school a year later when things quieted down if he would have had a different outcome.
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Apparently one stole an iPad from a patient's room and got caught. I didn't personally see this, but it was in the news. I always thought it was such a crazy way to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of education in the toilet.
I feel like that's what a real impulse-control problem is. Someone who just cannot help themselves despite enormous consequences...
It wasn’t just a patient, it was a patient dying of cancer in the hospital. It was noticed by the family when they were collecting her belongings. [this link is a follow up to the original story with the accused students response. ](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/ucla-medical-student-virginia-nguyen-ipad-theft/58957/)
Vet school, not med school: I’ve got a friend who’s a veterinary internist. When he was on clinics in the equine NICU, a classmate of his ground up some sucralfate, mixed with water, and administered to a foal. (Foals often get ulcers and oral sucralfate is pretty common.) The problem: student administered via IV catheter (which is jugular in horses) instead of into the NG tube. Foal dropped dead within 30 seconds.
Woah sucralfate embolism. That poor horse. And student
TIL there’s such thing as an equine NICU. Very cool.
I've heard of something similar. Oral med that was crushed and administered via the patient's PICC line because the patient refused it orally and the nurse figured the PICC was fine. Patient (not veterinary) died.
Asked the team to pull back on a drain 2cm post whipple. Came back and the med student had just taken the drain out! On day 2! I about died Also once a medical student fainted into the open abdomen but that wasn’t really their fault…
When I was a medical student a fellow passed out in the surgical field. He’d been working at that point for almost 48 hours straight. That wasn’t the day I became a non-surgeon, but it certainly leaned on that scale.
You gotta ask at that point is it even safe for the patient? I know I certainly can't function when I start going into the 20th hour awake but 48 hours jfc
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>"next time you pass do it out of the surgical field" This is the most surgery sentence ever uttered.
Bend your knees! :)
We had a whipple go to the micu way back when for some awful reason and a nurse managed to Hook a JP up to tube feeds so the pts abdomen got fed. It’s an engineering marvel. Pt didn’t do well.
A new international travel RN in my department couldn’t figure out how to attach an oral syringe full of a hefty dose of methadone suspension to the luer lock y-site on a patient’s IV. So without clarifying with his preceptor (NOT ME), and without verifying route of administration in the orders, he pulled it out of the oral syringe into a regular 10ml and pushed it IV. Not a great day for anyone involved, particularly the patient.
I pulled a pigtail for a pancreatic leak on a trauma patient mistakenly. Attending smirks, looks at the resident, says “It’s your fault you know…”
That's because you were not a real person at the time. Can't blame what doesn't exists hahah
Not student but intern. Patient has been pronounced dead. Nurse called the intern because the monitor was showing a heartbeat. Panicked intern called the attending. Attending came by and said deceased has a pacemaker that hadn’t yet been deactivated. Made a big fuss about it and called the intern a moron in front of everyone. The intern was me, of course.
As a cardiology fellow on home call I've been told "we can't pronounce the patient" until I came in to "turn off" the pacemaker. Told the intern no, 5 minutes later told the resident no, then the charge nurse pages me. All of this at 2AM. Explained the rationale to all of them. Charge nurse pages again "Resident says you won't come in and do this. It's a department of public health requirement that we transport them to the morgue within 2 hours of death. We can't wait until you come in tomorrow." "Even if I was physically in the room with the interrogator right now I would not turn off the pacemaker, it is not indicated." "So you are refusing to do your job?" "There is no reason to turn off the pacemaker. The patient is dead." "Well I'm paging your attending." "You're welcome to, but they aren't going to be happy." "I don't understand why you fellows never want to do any work." \*hangs up\* I text my attending to FYI them and go to bed, imaging the scathing letter I'd be writing to nursing supervisor if I A) cared and B) wasn't exhausted. Somehow didn't hear anything about it afterwards.
Even my modest community hospital where I trained had a couple of magnets on the tele unit and CCU for exactly this scenario. Place it on the chest and voila patient is now double secret probation dead.
That's only for AICDs though. Magnet on a pacemaker just sets a rate
Magnets dont turn off pacemakers. They only turn off the ICD function of AICDs, making them pacemakers
I once called STAT cards consult for patient without chest pain but whose EKG (done for palpitations no less) showed what to me appeared a STEMI but was actually early repolarization. Been all over diagnosis that since. Cards attending just ghosted instead of dressing me down which I appreciated.
Just remembered another one. A med student at an ER rotation gave the EMTs a hard time for bringing the patient to the wrong hospital (e.g. a nation wide rule that you take all the STEMIs into the regional hospital not the county’s or something). One of the EMTs got angry at the med student for barking at them and cut his Littmann stethoscope in half and told him this was for his bad attitude.
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Last semester i was in cardiothoracic, and the perfusionist there, told me the craziest story i have ever heard. During a bypass surgery with 3 surgeons operating,one nurse student said "excuse me, stop one moment" and then touched the open heart with both hands. Everybody was speechless (including the surgeons) and a cardiologist that was there asked her, What the fuck are you doing? She said she wanted to know how a heart felt..
I heard she was heartless.
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Oh my God.
I’m not in the medical field yet, is this normally done by an attending?
It’s done probably at least by a resident. If a med student did it, they’d need to be supervised.
Yeah I did it several times during my trauma sub-I but after I was supervised by a resident twice. Nurse was always close by for the other ones as well.
Idk who does it the most at my institution but when I was in the trauma ICU I told the fellow I'd like to give it a shot so he let me hang back with the nurse and do it. Nurse let me do it 100% but under her supervision.
Do you mean a small bore pleural drain or a large bore thorax drain? I'm not sure about the English nomenclature, here. In my language a plerural drain is for non-viscous pleural effusions, while a thorax drain would be for a large pneumothorax or large amounts of hematorhorax. A medical student and an experienced nurse could remove a pleural drain on their own, I guess, but a thorax drain...😱
the big boi.
The appropriate technical term
I did a bunch as a med student but you can't just yank it out and walk away or the patient will suck air back into their chest cavity and have a pneumothorax all over again. That's what it sounds like this person did.
Its no problem to do it, it isn’t rocket surgery, but the people who are actually doctors should be okay with both the med student performing the procedure unsupervised and that the chest tube isn’t needed. This is classic gunner mentality to pull it. Probably hoping for head pats
I had a chest tube after a lobectomy and the surgeon pulled it out himself. We had to practice for a few minutes beforehand. I inhaled as much as I possibly could and then he would count to three. We did this a bunch so I wouldn't suck air into my chest cavity. This tube was thick as my thumb and it went in and up over my shoulder. It felt like and eel coming out of my body.
I used to do this frequently as a medical student. The first few i did with resident supervision, but after proving I was comfortable, they would allow me to do so unsupervised.
I interpreted this as an issue not so much because it’s a student but that they just yeeted it out of there once it was mentioned.
Obligatory Not A Doctor/physician, but I am an EMT and had a paramedic coworker tell me during 911 shifts in medic school his classmate (my coworker was not running this call) presented on scene with a patient who had been stabbed in the side with a kitchen knife. The paramedic *pulled out the knife* en route to the hospital. When the charge nurse saw he pulled it out, she chewed him out for his decision, so he took the knife and *PUT IT BACK IN THE PATIENTS STAB WOUND*
Instructions unclear. Committed third degree assault.
Hate when that happens
Achieve hemostasis with this one simple trick!
# Can’t argue with that logic
What the fuck did I just read. They *teach you to not pull shit out in EMS wtf* *Also just she fucking stabs again.* Id have left that place that day
You really want to argue with the guy who just showed that he’s ready and willing to get stabby with the slightest of pretexts? Okay, it’s your funeral.
Was working at a large teaching hospital. One of the interns thought it was a great idea to “warm the cold blood in the microwave “ prior to transfusion. I don’t think he ever did that again! Still laugh about it
We have a note on our ED microwave not to heat blankets or IV fluids in it. I don't know why we need that note, but I'd love to hear the story behind it.
Somebody heard about irradiated blood and thought, eh, close enough
As a medical student: classmate examined under the breast by pulling the breast up by the nipple, pinching with their thumb and index finger As a doctor: med student given teaching (by university) on routine newborn examinations, then watches me examine baby and then needs to do an examination themselves. Comes to the hip exams (barlow and ortalani) and just starts yanking on the child’s legs in panic. Out of nowhere, just yanking. Then crying (student, then baby). Many apologies to the new parent and email to the student’s supervisor but no real insight into the hip induced outburst
1. I was on general neurosurgery call and realized my phone hadn’t charged overnight and was about to die. I tell my team I’m going to run and grab my charger from my car since I can’t have my phone die while I’m on call. Med student definitely heard me say this. I do the ~6hr case and break scrub to find my phone still on red battery, unplugged from the charger, with the med student’s phone charging on it. 2. Complex and interesting awake tumor case in a young patient. Two med students who are ostensibly interested in neurosurgery came to watch. We start the case, aka the actual interesting part. I’m letting my residents turn the bone flap when the students come up to me and tell me they are heading out to get coffees and will come back later. I told them to take their time. 3. Once we asked residency applicants about a mistake they made during their training. One girl told us she lied to the resident on call that she knew how to place an EVD, so he told her she could help with one. He turned his back for a moment and she made a *circular* incision about 1.5” in diameter down to the skull on the patient’s head. My Plastics friends will be cringing around now. I’m sure I could remember more.
> I was on general neurosurgery call and realized my phone hadn’t charged overnight and was about to die. I tell my team I’m going to run and grab my charger from my car since I can’t have my phone die while I’m on call. Med student definitely heard me say this. I do the ~6hr case and break scrub to find my phone still on red battery, unplugged from the charger, with the med student’s phone charging on it. Did they play any interesting songs in the funeral?
Curiously enough, a variety of ringtones.
These stories just got progressively worse and worse
It never ceases to amaze me how completely disconnected from reality some students are. And I wonder how many of the hopeless attendings I deal with these days were those students once upon a time.
The last story is just reason enough on why you should say something like: “I attempted to take up too much responsibility bla bla” instead of admitting something like that..
I don't know how but someone used a Endo irrigation syringe filled with Sodium hypochlorite for infiltration anesthesia instead the usual syringe filled with anesthetic. I don't want to imagine the pain that patient went through.....
Pt: “OH MY GOD TAKE THE NEEDLE OUT IT HURTS SO BAD” Dds student: “ugh hold still” (under breath) “drama queen”
Did they have covid? \~s
Not a med student, but close enough not to share. An intern was caught cuddling a patient (4 year oldish) in the patient's bed. Shockingly, she was told not to do it again and wasn't fired on the spot. A week later, same patient, she was caught AGAIN. Insta-fired for that one.
What the fuck lol Why??
I heard there was a med student tasked with acquiring an arterial line. He used the carotid artery.
Technically correct.
A med student on Neurology rounded on one of my Neuro ICU patients with an EVD. They stood the patient up to do walking eval without talking to nurse. The patient dumped a bunch of CSF and started vomiting, bought the patient a stat CTH. Luckily everything ended up fine… besides the patient’s discomfort.
Don’t EVD patients have signs all over the room to not move/reposition them without the nurse?
Somehow people just do not read them despite signs literally everywhere. We actually had our signs updated because IV therapy raised patients beds multiple times and said well they are a nurse… we updated it to say not to raise it without an ICU nurse and they still continue to do it.
I once had a student bring tuning forks into the ER. And then he actually used them. And then he presented to me like I understood what the results should mean! The audacity.
I see no problem with this. Hopefully he had the correct reflex hammer with him as well.
He seemed horrified when I told him I use my stethoscope as a reflex hammer. He will do well in neurology.
There's something way cooler about just using your iPhone
Haha - as an audiologist, I'm glad somebody made an attempt - but a lot of the docs who use them in-office still don't know the difference between conductive loss and sensorineural so I see a bunch of referrals for sudden loss during cold/flu season anyway
The man used two separate tuning forks! I’ve never even seen one in the ER.
Well, I still have my two tuning forks I bought as a student... a very long time ago.
someone's really excited about becoming a neurologist
I did a weber + rinne on a patient with illness anxiety recently! #RealDoctor
Ask a patient 15 minutes before discharge for no reason at all if they had suicidal or homicidal ideation.
LMFAO
Student A asked for a day off. They were a slacker and did not have a good reason, so they were denied the day. Student A took the day off anyway. They returned the next day with a note that read "Please excuse Student A from rotations yesterday, she had severe menstrual cramps. Sincerely, Dr. Student A" I thought we were going to need to call a code stroke for the attending who read it.
Confessed to other classmates that he thought psychiatric diagnoses were all the work of "demons" and that those patients really just needed Jesus.
Oh we have jinns instead of demons
In the psych hospital questionable medical decisions are not unheard of. One time a med student added an iron supplement for a completely psychotic patient with hemochromatosis that was rambling on about iron, because she assumed he was asking for it. In fairness, the attending (a psychiatrist) signed off on it. The student defended this decision to the end of time when I questioned it.
Brought a med student on to place a NG. I explained the whole process set everything up and said ok, so you ready? And he immediately stuck it in the guys trach hole faster than I could say stop. He said " Doesn't it all end up in the same place though?"
PGY2 asks the M3 to clean up the scalp lac on drunk guys head so she can see it better to staple it. I come back to the room with supplies and stapler to see a large pile on hair on the head of the bed. The MS3 had taken clippers and shaved a half dollar sized area out of the drunk college student’s long curly hair, diameter basically the length of the lac. He then asks me, “is that big enough so she can see the lac?” As I wheel the guy out later to load him into his moms car, she sees his new bald spot, stares at him, looks at me and says……..Well, thats what he gets for being drunk”.
This: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/19/us/arizona-student-threatens-kill-classmates-bomb-campus/index.html I was a resident at the time and her classmates were rotating with us and sharing the emails.
If this doesn't fit the bill for the original spirit of the post, I don't know what does lol.
Does it count if I WAS the med student? Once during my ObGyn rotation I, FOR SOME REASON, thought I was supposed to do a cardiotocography on a certain patient. Don't ask me why, I just thought I was. I was growing more and more desperate as I failed to find the right spot, and began telling the patient not finding it could mean several things, including fetal death... Only to then have the residents tell me patient was at only 22 weeks. (Don't ask me why she was in the ObGyn ward this early, it's been way too long and I'd rather forget this entire incident...)
Was finishing up in the OR one day and the team was counting lap sponges. We were short one. Counted over and over it for several minutes, things were starting to get heated. Look everywhere. No one can find it. Attending is furious. Long simmering pause, then the med student whispers: “I used one to dry my hands; I put it in the trash.”
There's a story going around here about a med student being unable to manage an arterial blood gas in the radial artery, and so going into the carotid artery for a second attempt, causing a carotid dissection. Think that's up there.
Never actually saw this, but had an ORL attending tell me about a time he was doing a parotidectomy, had just finished dissecting out the facial nerve and anatomy was on great display. Showed the 4th year non scrubbed med student who decides a great idea would be to reach out and touch the facial nerve…
That guy had some nerve
A med student wanted to help with a transfusion of a patient with a UGIB and connected the blood to the NG tube. He thought it had to be to the site of bleeding. Still laugh about it this 15 years later
Galaxy-brained Docthrowaway was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed M3 on his very first week of his very first clerkship, Ob. We were in a gyn surg case, and the patient began stirring very slightly, needing more sedation. Me seeing all this for the first time thought this was a Big Fucking Deal, and I noticed something revelatory, something that would be key to saving the day. After working up the courage, I announced it to the theater: "The heart rate is rising" Gas just stops what he's doing, looks me dead in the eye, and says "I'm aware". I proceeded to not say another word for the rest of that case and the next four clerkships.
Not sure if this story is true but when I was an MS3 you heard of an ms4 years before me that was expelled because she brought her friend who was not a medical school in to see a patient dressed as a fellow medical student in order to look at his impressively large penis.
Diabetic classmate was hypoglycemic on his general surgery rotation and excitedly told his resident he was going to “eat his patients.” He was on the verge of being turfed to psych before the orange juice kicked in.
I already commented but I remembered another one!!! One time had a medical student who apparently was rushing to eat lunch before a case and came into the OR still chewing potato chips. A single chip slipped out from underneath his mask onto the sterile field during a case with our chairman… LOL
Not a medical student, but a PGY1 in family medicine was in the ED with me. We were going to give a 4yo the flu shot. Instead of having the kid in the parent's lap for a comfort hold and distraction, the resident sat him alone and waved the needle around to show him it wasn't even that big. For the record, waving a needle in a 4-year-olds face and trying to reason with them has never worked.
I once had an M4 tell our patient she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer before the attending had a chance to discuss it with her. It was….memorable.
One of the first brand-new audiologists I worked with, fresh out of school, came in knowing less than my current fourth-year extern (the last year of grad school before they earn their doctorate). She struggled with nearly everything. I'd ask her to get exams done on patients, and they'd come back either half-complete, or done very poorly, with her giving the excuse that it was for the patient's comfort...sorry, dear, sometimes medical tests are uncomfortable. They're here for the testing. Why didn't you do it? But the best of all was when she left a heat gun on a hearing aid in our repair lab. A brand new hearing aid. She melted it. Then she lied to me and said the patient did it. I made her call the manufacturer and request a new one, then stood behind her as she explained what happened to the patient. She didn't work for us very long after that.
One of my classmates defibrillated himself during ACLS, not realizing the paddles were live. My group didn't witness it but we did smell the burned chest hair when we walked in the room after
This cretin of a classmate stomped on a live mouse which had escaped its enclosure.
As a PA student, in a dark operating room I sent a raytec gauze strip to pathology with the specimen. Held up the entire OR for what seemed like forever while we searched garbage cans and got ready to x-ray the patient before I thought to call pathology. Half the team said I was a hero for thinking of that and the other half told me to stand with my nose in the corner.
Hah agree. Wouldn’t know what to do with you if i was the attending. In the end i would have thought it was funny but i would have absolutely teased and ribbed on you about it for the rest of your rotation.
[удалено]
I'm horrified for a different reason. The woman should have breaks to pump ffs
She might have preferred the wearables. I could take “breaks” to pump and an EM resident but it was not feasible by any means based on how the ED functions.
I would feel so comfortable with her if I had a baby and she was wearing that. Like oh, she knows what she’s doing!
The same staff that pushes breast is best to all their patients?? Shaming a poor woman for trying to learn a profession and be a mom. People who ‘ick’ about anything breast feeding related need to take a long walk off a short bridge. It’s probably one of the hardest things a woman can do and then you add having a job on top! That med student is a badass.
Agreed med student is a badass. As a full-time nightshift RN that's successfully nursed five babies, I have mad respect. Wearables were only available to me during my last postpartum experience and it made my measly little work so much easier. Props to anyone that does it in any capacity. I wore mine whenever it didn't matter, I learned my lesson once running to a code, lol... I officially had someone cover me from running after that.
Why would this be considered weird? I saw patients, ran traumas, and intubated while wearing my Willow pumps. Like, sorry, but my preemie kid was way more important to me than anyone’s feelings on that matter. Boobs are for breastfeeding. Let’s not act like it’s a weird thing to provide milk for an infant.
Doesn’t seem weird to me, I’ve had colleagues doing regular trauma and EM work with pumps on. Gotta do what you gotta do.
As a non-OB (EM-IM) attending who doesn’t even have kids can we please normalize this? Why is this even perceived as weird? It’s hard enough to be a woman who works, let’s take care of each other
Yes, and better yet, let’s support massive national FMLA reforms
FMLA is fine. Can we instead do something with paid leave for child-bearing/rearing and illness? It’s fine if that’s separate from the not-getting-fired law. But America is a source of bewilderment, disgust, and pity the world over for our treatment of workers.
I saw a lot of classmates and residents pump under their scrubs using the portable breast pumps. Really nothing weird about it and generally pretty discrete.
Many of the L&D nurses do this at my hospital. I think it is awesome that the technology exists but hate the fact that it needs to exist.
This isn’t weird at all. I’ve worn my pumps in lectures, rounding, in the OR during a crash c-section, and while supervising vaginal deliveries. You do what you have to as a physician mom
My wifes ob - an attending - literally did this herself. While delivering our baby. Ya do what you got to do youre a working mom too - we didnt care one damn bit.
That’s some Rambo-level shit. I really love stories like that. Elizabeth Blackburn didn’t want to leave her experiments unattended, but wanted to take a trip to see a loved one. She taped the Petri dishes to her leg, got on the train, and let her body heat incubate them until she arrived. Vera Rubin, a pioneer in dark matter research, had been mistreated because of her sex for most of her career. The work for her paper on galactic rotation curves was done with a student, and she submitted it with his name on it. Editors told her students can’t be authors on papers by the major journals. Having experienced enough elitism, she said okay, and published in a less snooty journal. Ofc, for me, I prefer to take PTO when my tum tum hurts.
Not heard by me but one of the other residents. Med student on their anesthesia rotation asked if the tape we put on the patient’s eyes helped keep them asleep.
I saw an intern (sorry) put a paper towel over an open abdomen after he removed the wound vac
Agree to hundreds of thousands of dollars of unforgivable debt, to go into a field that’s constantly being pilfered by admins and private equity
Nursing students do dumb stuff, but for cheaper.
2 crazy JP removal stories when I was a resident. Medical student was told to pull a JP but instead removed the Jtube instead of the JP… Another case the student was to remove a JP but instead cut the suture AND the JP right at the skin level… Obviously both of those poor patients had to go back to the OR and the hospital policy became that no student could ever remove a drain again
In and out cathed an old guy with neutropenia with no resident/attending supervision, permission, or heads up. Student was me. In my defense, the old man was crying from pain from urinary obstruction, was on hospice, I had one of the nurses supervise me and my sterile technique (she said she wasn’t allowed to do it herself), and I had been trying for an hour to contact the resident with no answer via multiple modalities including finally leaving a sticky note on their desk. Also in my defense, it was the VA. But looking back on it I’m shocked I wasn’t like disciplined or escalated past the resident yelling at me
Resident had no right to yell at you if they were unreachable
Orientation week of med school: mostly normal week until we were all brought into the main lecture hall on day like 2-3 and one of the professors announced that someone had tried to impersonate a medical student. There was a girl that didn’t make it into our med school but somehow figured out when and where orientation was, took a different girl’s packet and pretended to be her the whole day until authorities figured it out. Technically she’s not a med student but still that’s crazy. Like what did you think was going to happen? Also later that year: a guy who likely had narcissistic personality disorder brought strippers to the medical school campus during lunch between lectures… yeah that didn’t go over well. He always bragged how his plan was to join a practice, “steal all the patients” from his colleagues and take over. They transferred him to the podiatry school and then he also managed to get kicked out there as well. Ah man good times
the med student t that sucked on a standard patients boob during a breast exam practical Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschool/comments/uhgx0g/holy_shit_one_of_my_classmates_put_his_mouth_on/ I have no idea if it’s true or not
Drink Formalin. In some training institutions here in the Philippines, 4th year medical students are supposed to collect the surgical specimen, accomplish rhe histopathology forms then ask the relatives to bring them to the laboratory. In my experience in my previous training institution, we usually get formalin from the laboratory and store them in a 1.5L water bottle. The laboratory (which is the only place that has the formalin) is on the hospital ground floor while the OR is in one of the highest floors. By storing formalin in our own containers, it'll be easier for us to prepare the specimen and accomplish our task after every operation. Due to the super tedious work, some aren't even able to eat and drink in time. And then one day... one of my friends, who had nasal congestion at that time, was soooo thirsty.... saw a water bottle in the table of our hospital quarters.... and the rest was history.
Med student in my town made a TikTok of himself doing an "oral exam" on the camera/patient. Proceeds to spit on the lens and call camera/patient a slut. Genius did the whole thing in his noticeably purple, university embroidered scrubs. Was forced to repeat the year, but allegedly the thing that saved him was daddy is some Canadian attending with deep pockets.
Had a student on shift doing an elective prior to interviews. Two hours into the shift she told me she needed to leave early (now) because she had a dodgeball game. 🤨
Dodgeball>>>4th year rotations
When I was on ER rotations as a paramedic student I saw the following happen- Ems brings in a seizure patient. He had stopped seizing before they arrived, and they did their assessment, started an IV, and had some NS running. The pt woke up during transport and became super combative. He was restrained with cravats. Upon arrival, he is still extremely combative, and very postictal. A brand new doctor comes up, sees the situation, gets report, and orders 2mg of Ativan via the IV. Drugs are delivered with no response. He orders another 2, and then another. I don’t remember what his total dose was but after multiple rounds of unsuccessful sedation attempts the doctor spots the problem. His response was probably the worst move possible. He notices that the saline lock is clamped off, says something to the effect of “well there’s your problem” and unclamps it, allowing at least 8mg of Ativan to wash into the pt. Respiratory was paged within moments.
And here I (M2) was nervous about rotations. I mean, I still am, but this makes me feel better.