ECT Observation

I had meant to post this a long time ago seeing as I observed on November 26. . .

Hello!

As a part of my financial aid for college, I was given work study money. Since I know I want to become a doctor I hoped that my job would be something research or at least science related. After a lot of disappointing rejections and interview, I finally got a job at a local geriatric hospital/outpatient center/health center. As you can probably tell, this place helps patients with a lot of different ailments but the common factor among all of them is their age. More specifically, I work with the department of psychiatry that addresses depression in the elderly. Since the medical community does not know very much about depression and other mental illness no matter what the age, the place where I work tries to create more awareness for the problems depression patients face. When patients with depression do not respond or cannot tolerate depression medication, ECT or electroconvulsive therapy, is suggested.

Electroconvulsive therapy sounds scary and if you know anything about what ECT is you are probably thinking about extremely dangerous and harmful treatments where the patients are shocked. Yes, an electrical current is sent through there brain, but no, its not in anyway harmful or painful for the patient. The patients are put under general anesthesia and monitored by a doctor, nurse, and anesthesiologist the entire time. When I went in to observe, I was expecting a long treatment time, but the goal is to send as strong of a current a patient can tolerate in about an 8 second period. It seems like it takes longer to get the patients hooked up to the heart monitor and EEG than it is to actually administer the treatment.

Getting to observe ECT was particularly rewarding to me also because I was able to help with the procedure. In no way were they going to let me administer the drugs or hyper/hypoventilate the patients, but I was able to interact with the patients and aid in the process some. There was one patient who was particularly difficult for the nurses to handle. She was trying to pull out her IV, get out of the bed, and kept muttering, "She wants to get out, I have to help her get out!" Turns out this patient has a history of dementia. I ended up holding her hand and trying to calm her down enough for the anesthesiologist to get the medicine into her IV line and eventually put her to sleep. The entire time we were working with this patient I was scared and worried I would screw something up, a feeling I had the entire time I was there, but it ended up working out really well.

I wish I could have stayed and watched more procedures done, but I had to go to class. I also wish I had asked the questions that have been rattling around in my brain ever since that day, but I was just trying to take everything in and not get in their way. Either way, I have no regrets about becoming a doctor because this experience was so invigorating and I left that place with a sense of accomplishment and a smile on my face.

Have you interned anywhere pertaining to the field you want to enter?