NEW ORLEANS, LA – During vascular surgery rounds this morning, a medical student fainted in a patient’s room, and no one cared.
“On the vascular surgery service, it is the medical student’s job to get the 15-lb bag full of dressing supplies. The strap was digging into my neck, and then suddenly my vision went gray, my hearing sounded like I was in a tunnel, and I got really weak,” said the med student, whose name no one knows despite three weeks on the service.
“I slumped to the floor in room 308 while the residents were talking to the patient, and the nurse asked “Are you ok?” and I said, “No!” and she did nothing.”
The medical student then started listing the differential diagnoses for syncope, at which point the author tuned him out and waited for his mouth to stop moving.
Witnesses say the residents walked over the slumped-on-the-floor would-be doctor, left the room, asked “Where’s the med stud?” and kept rounding. Close behind was a short-coated, flop-sweaty medical student carrying an enormous heavy-looking bag.
An attending was nowhere to be found.
