I survived my first week of clinicals! It was rather uneventful. Pain management and a lot of medication reconciliation. Unless something crazy happens, it isn't like the most exciting of units for nights. Ortho patients and lots of thyroidectomies and prostatectomies and hysterectomies - and transgender patients getting much-needed physical changes to help with gender dysphoria.
Most interesting case was a retained surgical instrument. Remind me never to have surgery... because holy. crap. No. I don't need anything left inside of me and for the surgeon to just shrug and go "you'll be fine" -_- Sure, sure. (in this case, they recognized the lost item immediately while in surgery and searched for it, took multiple x-rays that showed the item and the approximate location, but couldn't find it even after multiple searches. And sometimes, you just have to know when to stop traumatizing the area. A bit terrifying, if you ask me)
My research did reveal that the most common surgeries for instrument retainment are abdominal and gynecological, and the estimation is that in about every 1000 to 18,000 surgeries, this occurs (though they suspect that is an underestimation). One of the articles was a case study of a suture needle (tiny tiny tiny) getting lost during brain surgery. I about noped out of my seat reading that. Jaw on the floor. CT didn't find it, but MRI did - they did have to return to surgery to successfully get the item.
Apparently there are no further plans to retrieve the suture needle from the patient I cared for last night, so yeah. Wow.
