Shock Trauma Center

On October 1st I started my third clinical rotation! (recap: one, two) This month I am down in Baltimore at the Shock Trauma Center (STC) which is part of the University of Maryland Medical System.  This is a specialty rotation which I signed up for - we had to request this rotation because it is so far away, if I hadn't been selected I just wouldn't have gotten a trauma rotation.  To get there I take an Amtrak train from NYC to Baltimore and then I take a bus to the University of Maryland where I am staying in a dorm room that is within walking distance from the hospital.  The trip takes about 4 hours door-to-door which would be fine except for the fact that we are still expected to show up for class every Monday morning in NY - boo!  There are three other students at this clinical site with me, but none of them are from Columbia:

We work 12 hour shifts from 6:45-6:45.  This first two weeks I was on night shift and the next two weeks I will be on day shift (my body hates me right now).  STC is a free-standing hospital but we are connected to the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) so, to differentiate STC staff from UMMC staff (and to discourage stealing of scrubs), the STC gives us pink scrubs to wear:

So far I've seen gun shot wounds, stabbings, car crashes, falls, sports injuries and patients who are already inpatients somewhere but then they have a medical emergency and need surgery immediately (like 2am on Saturday).  All in all it has made me very anxious about all of the ways that I can get hurt!  I don't have any cool work photos but I do have this photo of Eric and I at school last Monday learning how to do cricothyrotomies on pig tracheas:

A cricothyrotomy is a way we would secure an airway in an emergency when, for whatever reason, we are unable to intubate our patient.  Here is a picture of where you would do it on a real person:

This is what they are doing on TV shows when someone shoves a ballpoint pen in a choking person's neck - lets keep our fingers crossed that I never need to do one :)