PHOENIX, AZ – At 2:30 a.m., medical student Amanda Williamson was abruptly woken from her deep sleep to a STAT page. “At first I didn’t realize what was going on. Medical students are never paged STAT,” said Williamson.
The page simply said, “OR 3 STAT.” Williamson crawled out of her call room and down to the operating room (OR). Chief resident, Dr. Emanuel Freedmont, greeted her with the news.
“I tried to sell it as an exciting case for her. I think she may have bought it.”
Williamson was convinced that she was going to be an integral part of the OR team and that only her hands could help clear a large fecal bowel obstruction. She performed the manual disimpaction flawlessly with encouragement from Dr. Freedmont from afar.
“She did a fantastic job. Much better than any resident or attending,” said Freedmont.
Williamson was thrilled that she had “saved” the day. So much so, she actually started to contemplate going into a surgical residency. She couldn’t sleep anymore that night due to all the excitement. That is until she got home and found out from her medical school roommates, that the same thing had happened to them.
“I went from feeling really special to feeling like an idiot in about 8 seconds,” says Williamson. “How could people working in medicine be so mean!”
