Mudgee, Day 3 - Venepuncture Heaven

Today I died and went to venepuncture heaven (aka the pathology clinic). One of the first things I learnt in med school was how to take blood - I've practised countless times on fake arms, friends' arms and familys' arms; but by jolly, the thrill has yet to wear off! I guess the biggest difference in today's session (as opposed to previous venepuncture stints) was that I spent the entire day doing it, in the spirit of "practice makes perfect".

Venepuncture isn't a particularly difficult skill to acquire by any means; but the anatomical variations are enough to spice up the procedure and keep you in a hypervigilant state. It was particularly interesting, from an educational point of view, to be exposed to such a wide array of antecubital fossae - from the knotted and jumpy veins hiding underneath the thin, wrinkled skin of Mrs Senior-Citizen; to the deeeep, non-palpable veins lurking underneath the too-thick subcut layer of Mr Morbidly-Obese. I know it's hard to guage improvement with these skills because of the variable presentations, but I feel so much more confident now with getting harder veins; deciding on what to do next on realising I've missed the vein; as well as the pre- and post- set-ups. These aren't particularly challenging tasks either, but it takes a bit of practice to develop a systematic way of going about a multi-tasked procedure without looking:
a) Awkward
b) Figedity
c) Like a complete idiot who has no idea what they're doing
d) All of the above
I don't know, it's hard to describe; I mean, it's just venepuncture right?! But I'm starting to feel a bit like a significant portion of successful procedural medical work involves coordinated and efficient execution of tasks; done, of course, with as much confidence as your situation permits. It's not what you can do - but how smoothly you can do it. This is where practice comes in.

Anyway, the day also saw me do some deltoid IM injections (immunisations galore!), give desensitisation therapy antigens, and take out lots of sutures :-S Again, the "practice makes perfect" rule applies here. On the whole, another invaluable day of exposure and practice - it's going to be really hard for me to go back to doing BS theorical learning when semester two resumes in a couple of weeks.

So, off to make dinner and then watch some DVDs. Oh and in case you were wondering, I missed two veins today (out of about fifteen). I'm getting there...