Why You DON'T Want to be a Doctor

My First Code When you become a medical student, one of the first experiences you look forward to greatly is participating in your first code. It is an event that you do not know how you will react to and although you look forward with anticipation, you additionally experience a bit of dread. You wonder if you will not know what to do. Maybe you will freeze. Perhaps you will kill someone. All sobering, tortuous thoughts, and you do not know how you will react until you actually are there. My first code occurred when I was a 3rd year medical student. I was rounding with my attending, the "Dreaded Dr. S.", when he stopped walking, looked directly at a patient in the ICU, and asked me, "What's wrong with that patient"? Knowing nothing of the patient's history, I quickly peered at him from the doorway. He appeared to be resting and I said nothing, as I had no clue as to any problem readily apparent. The "Dreaded Dr. S" quickly shoved me aside as he told me, "this patient is not breathing!" Dr. S. pulled the code alarm on the wall and before I could even blink, 5 ICU techs came running into the room. As a finely tuned machine, they brought clipboards, and medications, and crash carts, oh my! Compressions were started and blood began to spurt everywhere. The "Dreaded Dr. S" paged the surgeon who had just completed cardiovascular surgery on this patient 2 days prior. But as luck would have it, he happened to be right down the hall when the code alarm sounded. He also ran to the patient's bedside and he was pissed when he got there. It was a complete fiasco from that point forward. The finely tuned machine began to fall apart as the surgeon yelled, "Get the F'ing blood. The O negative F'ing blood. Where the F is the rapid transfuser? Why does the patient not have the F'ing defibrillation pads on yet? " Techs turned on one another. One tech attempted to put defibrillation pads on the patient and another screamed for her to get out of the way while she was continuing compressions. One tech headed to the patients head and grabbed an ambu bag that had not yet been hooked into the wall for oxygen. One tech ran from the room frantic. The remaining tech and I both stood with our eyes wide and our jaws dropped, not able to believe what we were seeing. The surgeon continued to yell orders throughout the entire code which only caused further mayhem. "F'ing this and F'ing that". Blood F'ing flew here and blood F'ing flew there. The whole room looked like a crime scene. Needless to say, after 60 minutes of discombobulation, the time of death was called. At that point everyone in the room had been spattered with blood. The surgeon threw down his blood soaked scrub top onto the floor and headed down the hall where I could still hear him yelling "F'ing this and F'ing that". That day has lingered in my memory for quite some time, and although the patient died in that code, I did learn something positive from that experience. To this day I have never yelled in a code, much less yelled the F word. I learned that keeping a calm head and communicating effectively with my staff allowed for the well oiled machine to function. I found if I respected my staff, and I gave them the opportunity to excel, they would do just that, working as a team. Because after all, isn't saving lives what it is F'ing all about anyway?