Trauma call

Third trauma shift. Much busier than the other two.
There were a lot of "firsts".

First time..
seeing a CPR code.
seeing a doctor call time of death
doing an ABG
washing a degloved hand (4th and 5th finger crushed. i could feel the bits of bone)
hearing first-hand inter-department drama (in which ortho and surgery gets mad each other and the chiefs call each other out and voices are raised in the workroom)
cleaning someone's wound while their parents are watching (omg no. never again please)
suturing someone's face
suturing someone's face when they're awake
(thank goodness for Ativan and local anesthetic) 
- 8 simple interrupted stitches with 5-0 vycril; instrument tie.

second time getting an arterial line.

--

I have so much respect for specific med students who actively try to help each other out and split up tasks evenly. Trauma shift is kinda weird in that there are students who have trauma as their surgery rotation. But the other students (like me!) just have trauma call - so I'm put into gen surg and only have a shift in trauma about once a week. So I can see how the trauma call students can be seen as intruding on the trauma rotation students' space. But man, there is just such a difference in attitudes that I've seen.

There's a super cool dude who was incredibly generous the entire night: gave up his OR time because someone hadn't seen anything but urology stuff (this boggles the mind a bit because cool dude also rarely gets to go into the OR); offered minor procedural tasks to other students; incredibly helpful without being condescending. So much respect.

And then contrasting... quite a bit of disdain for the one(s) who always end up hogging procedures and/or trying to push "boring" tasks on other people. Maybe I just value fairness too much.