Case Study Tara Binns: Double-quick Doctor WISE Name: Dr Anni Mekhail Job title: Critical Care Doctor Job description: I work in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to provide life support care and organ support care to very unwell patients. Location of work: Royal London Hospital, UK
What is a typical day at work like? I arrive at 8 o’clock in the morning. The night doctor is finishing their shift and talks through the 15 patients that are in the ICU. They tell us a quick summary of why the patient is in hospital, what happened to them overnight and any jobs that need to be done for them that day. Then I begin my morning review of patients. I see a 25-year-old man who has multiple injuries from a car accident and an 85-year-old woman who needs a ventilator to support her breathing because of an auto-immune disease. I examine each patient, check their lab results, speak to their families and update the nurses about any medicines, tests or machines that need to be used for their treatment. The man from the car accident was very unwell when he came in, but he had emergency surgery overnight and his body is stabilising. It will be a few weeks before he is ready to leave the ICU, but the most dangerous injuries have been fixed. The older woman with the auto-immune disease was very weak when she came in, but she is slowly improving and I’m pleased she has more strength in her arms today. Suddenly my pager goes off. There’s a new patient coming to the Emergency Department and the doctor there thinks the patient will need to come to the ICU. I go down to the Emergency Department and meet the patient – a 32-year-old woman. She is normally very healthy, but has been feverish and has had a cough for the past few days. Her blood tests come back showing that her kidneys are struggling, which can sometimes happen with bad infections. We decide she should come to the ICU for antibiotics, breathing support and kidney support. At the end of the day, the night shift doctor comes back and I tell them what happened with each patient and anything that needs to be done for them overnight. I tell them about our new patient – the woman with the chest infection – and I go home. Strong antibiotics are a very effective treatment for infections, and I am pleased to see on my shift a few days later that the woman is recovered enough to wake up and strong enough to go home.
© HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
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