McMurdo General Hospital
I arrived on Thursday night and began work the following morning. For everyone arriving, work starts right away with a 54 hour week: from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM with lunch/errands from 11:30 to 1 every day except Sunday. The medical personnel also have call every third to fourth night.
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| Shawn the Nurse Manager, Chris the outgoing Lead Physician and Beth, the outgoing Physical Therapist in the Clinic Kitchen at the 7:30 morning meeting |
Currently, there are five of us in the clinic: the winter season chief doctor (he overlaps with us for one month), the winter season physical therapist (she's leaving in a few weeks), Shawn (the nurse manager), Dean and me. But with only 250 or so people on base, we haven't had much to do in terms of patient care. Over the first week, we've had eight patients. The worst was someone who was dehydrated after a night of drinking needing IV fluids (please, this goes no further than the blog. Loose lips sink the Antarctic program). Other than that, it was the usual primary care: mild GI illness, post-nasal drip, muscle strains, dust in the eye. Not much I couldn't handle. But the place is also set up for mass casualties as well as for major medical and surgical care. Those I'm not so prepared for. So when we aren't seeing patients, there is a lot to learn.
So far, we've practiced using the X-ray machine. I got a perfect x-ray of a stuffed monkey but when I took a PA chest X-ray on Dean, it was terrible. I only got from the second rib down and forgot to ask him to take a deep breath, getting more abdomen than chest. Then, Dean took a lateral film of my ankle. It was perfect. I think I need more work.
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| The Lab |
On Saturday, we practiced routine lab assays like CBCs and chemistry panels. I had to draw blood and, although I've done a lot of that in my career and it felt quite natural, I missed on the first try. Again, embarrassing.
Then yesterday, we got to my bailiwick. I did the monthly inspection of the kitchen for our large dining facility, the Galley (the clinic does all public health). Running an industrial kitchen is an amazing enterprise. I enjoyed meeting the Executive Chef, walking into all the freezers and storage rooms, checking out the huge steamer kettles and the combi-ovens. The thaw room is in an uninsulated part of the building and, unlike restaurants in more temperate climates, they have to put a heater in it to get the meat to thaw in a reasonable time. As for the inspection itself, my experience working with environmental health inspectors while at the CDC served me well. Although, overall, I was impressed by the cleanliness and organization, I caught a few things that needed remediation, e.g., raw chicken stored above other raw meats and a faulty temperature log. But the nice thing about inspection in Antarctica is the absence of all vermin: no cockroaches, no ants, and no rats. When I mentioned that to Shawn, he said, "if we saw a furry pest--even a rat--people would be torn about whether to kill it or to pet it". People miss their pets.
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