Hi,

After hitting a low of two patients, when one of our remaining 3 died, we went on take on Wednesday night and refilled our list. Night take lasts from 4pm until 8am the next morning, and is followed by a post-take ward round that goes on until about lunchtime, before the usual activities continue the next afternoon. Fortunately, students don't have to completely miss out on a night's sleep - I left before midnight and was back in the hospital in time to check on the patients I'd clerked before presenting them on the post-take ward round. Living near the hospital was particularly advantageous, as it meant I could go home to my own bed instead of using an on-call room at the hospital.

So after the lull at the beginning of last week, I now have plenty of patients to talk to and examine, and we're on take again twice this week so there certainly won't be a shortage in the near future. As part of our assessment for the general medicine attachment, we have to present a case to a consultant and the other students, and discuss an aspect of their care with critical analysis of a research paper. It's my turn to do a presentation this Thursday, and I've chosen to talk about a patient who came in on our take with diabetic ketoacidosis last week. She stands out from the usual general medicine patients, amongst whom under 80s are labelled as "young", since she is only 17. Ideally, we should have clerked the patient ourselves when they came in, but this girl went straight to intensive care so that wasn't possible, but I've been able to catch up on her original condition by looking at her notes. I'm currently writing my powerpoint presentation and reading up on the role of bicarbonate in the treatment of DKA...