Thursday, March 20, 2008

On call

I'm on call today (7am-7pm). At 7am I get a call from the off-going medwife to tell me about the two patients at the hospital. One is a women at 40.1 weeks VBAC, and previous successful VBAC, who came in contracting about every 5 minutes but mild. The medwife kept her because even though her cervix wasn't changing, she didn't think a VBAC should be walking around unmonitored when contracting that much. Um...ok. I told the nurse to send her home (she was requesting to go home anyway as her cxns had spaced out to 8-10 minutes anyway).

The other patient on L&D, a 36 weeker who was contracting and having pain. she ran a UA and CBC...the patient had a UTI, slightly dehydrated, and no cervical change. She got ampicillin IV during the night as well as stadol. Um...ok. I asked the nurse to give the patient the option of going home (with some oral antibiotics) or staying in the hospital and just watching her. Guess what she chose? She wanted to go home. How's that for clearing L&D out?

Actually, I wish they were in labor so I could catch babies but not at the expense of subjecting patients to unneeded intervention.

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