Real Blood!!

You may remember in a previous post of mine I commented on how in our clinical exams we all felt rather silly talking politely to a plastic fake arm before taking blood from it. Well it must have paid off because today in the hospital, I got to take blood from a real patient with a REAL arm! (2 in fact!)

I wasn't the first in my house to do this, several of my medic housemates have come home equally excited at doing this pretty basic skill on a proper person for the first time. I definitely feel like I have joined the club. I'm sure we won't be so excited in a few years when we are the junior doctors responsible for taking bloods from 20 patients a day, but for now, the novelty of remains.

The very nice and helpful house officer (junior doctor) who supervised/helped me with my first bloods seemed happy with my effort. The first patient (who incidentally didn't know she was the first until I was finished) said "OW" loudly as I put the needle in, but the second lady even said "Thank-you" when I was done - Success!!

Tomorrow is my first 'on-call' - we'll see how that goes.....