Chapter 165
“Wait, pull up the chart.”
I leaned toward the monitor.
“Huh...”
For a moment, I doubted my eyes.
Potassium is 6.2?
Isn’t the normal range 3.5 to 5.5?
Once it goes over 6, cardiac arrhythmia can strike and he could die suddenly.
And creatinine is 8.5?
Normal is 1.2 or lower, right?
“Why are these numbers like this?”
As I muttered, Yoon Tae-hyun stamped his feet and urged me on.
“Right? Isn’t it weird? Shouldn’t we treat him right away? Should we prep calcium gluconate and insulin?”
“And why does the creatinine look like that too? The BUN is high as well.”
I frowned.
The patient was a minor injury case who came in after being pricked by a hook while fishing.
But the blood test results were those of a kidney-failure patient who should be rushed straight to dialysis.
“A simple trauma patient suddenly has acute kidney failure? Or... rhabdomyolysis?”
Did he tumble on some rocky shore and melt all his muscles away?
Or was there poison on the hook or something?
But the patient walked in fine, and his urine color was normal.
The clinical symptoms and lab results didn’t match at all.
“All right, I got it. You go write the order—just a sec.”
I grabbed Yoon Tae-hyun’s shoulder as he was about to place a treatment order.
Something’s off.
“Yes! Over at bed B-1!”
Yoon Tae-hyun tried to turn and shout with fierce determination, then hesitated.
“?”
The two of us, both looking toward the B section where the patient was lying across from the station, fell silent at the same time.
The nurses were looking at their phones with completely serene expressions.
“They’re watching YouTube?”
“Looks like it.”
If the patient were sweating cold sweat, clutching his chest, or clearly in bad shape, there was no way the nurses would be that calm.
“The patient is looking at his phone too?”
“Huh...”
I suddenly recalled what had happened earlier.
[And the EMR here is a little different from the main hospital’s. It’s a different vendor.]
[The triage record still pops up when you double-click, same as before....]
[...But when you click the patient chart, the history doesn’t appear right away; you have to press this tiny little arrow tab here for the history to show up.]
“Ah.”
I snatched the mouse.
“Hey, this. This arrow in the corner here.”
“Huh? This one?”
Click.
Then the hidden patient information window slid open.
[PMHx]
Diabetes and hypertension.
[ESRD on HD]
Found it.
And the memo written beneath the history.
[They say this patient gets regular dialysis at Geoje Joeun Hospital on Tuesdays. Today is dialysis day, so after discharge they’re going straight to dialysis.]
Case solved!
This patient has chronic kidney failure and can’t urinate because his kidneys are shot.
So his blood has to be filtered through a dialysis machine.
Right before dialysis, waste would naturally be building up in his body, so high potassium and creatinine are normal.
There was no reason for us to freak out.
“You idiot. You didn’t check the history? You didn’t ask the patient? Didn’t you hear he was on dialysis?”
“Aah! S-sorry, doctor!”
Yoon Tae-hyun bowed his head, looking ashen.
“I mean, there was no past history on the chart, so I thought maybe there just wasn’t anything else to enter...”
“Phew. Damn, that shaved ten years off my life.”
I patted my chest in relief.
If I’d given an insulin-mixed IV or something to lower the potassium here, it would’ve thrown off the dialysis schedule, and more than anything, I would’ve almost been saddled with the stigma of being a university hospital doctor who didn’t even know he was dealing with a dialysis patient.
I’d almost caused a huge disaster right after opening.
“Get a grip, you idiot!”
“Aaaah, I’m really sorry, doctor! Seriously, I’m not making excuses—no, it’s just that it wasn’t visible right on the screen, so I got confused too! The UI is way too unfriendly! Agh!”
Yoon Tae-hyun let out a scream mixed with apology and frustration.
The system really was garbage.
Where do they hide important past history like that?
“I’ll file a complaint with the IT team about this later. We need to tell them to change vendors.”
Just as I was lamenting that...
“Excuse me?”
The middle-aged patient lying on a bed in section B must have sensed the commotion and came dragging his IV pole over to the station.
“Did something happen? Is there something wrong with my body? Why are the doctors yelling so seriously...?”
The patient’s eyes were full of anxiety.
Crap.
I’d made too much of a scene in front of the patient.
“Ah... haha, no, sir.”
In an instant, I changed my expression and started the world’s friendliest-doctor act.
“We looked at your blood test results, and they were a bit high, so we were startled. But after checking again, we realized you’re a dialysis patient, so the numbers are only temporarily high before dialysis and we just misunderstood. Hahaha.”
“Oh, really? Hahaha...”
The patient finally laughed in relief.
“Yes, that’s right. It’s dialysis day today, so I have to go now.”
“Anyway, the drip you’re hooked up to here—we put it in to correct your low blood sugar, but I’ll just take it out. There’s not much left anyway. Please settle up and go straight to dialysis.”
“Goodness. Can I really go without getting all of this? What a waste.”
“Don’t worry about it. Going now is better for your body.”
I motioned to the nurse.
The nurse came over instinctively and removed the IV line.
“Take care~.”
Watching the patient’s retreating back, I wiped the cold sweat from my brow.
Drip, drip.
‘Does Yoon Tae-hyun have tunnel vision like Park Seong-jeong?’
That dangerous line of sight where you get fixated on one thing and can’t see anything around you.
Park Seong-jeong had improved a lot, but this kid was just getting started.
A rough training course lay ahead.
‘Still, the EMR system is also a big part of it, so chewing him out too much probably wouldn’t fix it.’
When the system is garbage, people end up suffering.
I tapped Yoon Tae-hyun on the shoulder.
“Everybody’s like that at first. Just be careful from here on out.”
“Yes! I’ll keep it in mind! I’ll carve that arrow into my eyeballs!”
“...You don’t have to go that far.”
“Go sort out the chart.”
Anyway, that was a close call.
...
***
“Then the ER day-shift crew can clock out! Dismissed!”
5:30 p.m.
Park Se-young cheerfully shouted from the middle of the station.
“Professor, we still have some time left before our shift ends.”
I asked, checking the time out of habit.
“Because of the all-hands OT, dinner, and a bunch of other events, about two hours on both the day and night shifts have been blocked off since it’s the first day. The hospital’s being considerate.”
Park Se-young waved both hands dismissively.
“While you’re away, we’ll have two specialists, including me, covering things here, so don’t worry and go on ahead.”
“We love you, Professor!”
Park Se-young, you’re the best.
That kind of ease and generosity was something you never saw at the main hospital.
The sea air must really make people this positive.
And a little later, inside the elevator on the way to the main auditorium.
...
I fell silent, looking at my reflection in the mirror.
“But why am I the only one in a hoodie?”
Yoon Tae-hyun beside me was in a shirt and slacks.
Baek Eun-seo was in neat new scrubs and a lab coat.
Even Kim Seo-ah had come wearing a blouse under her coat.
Then why did I look like a ghost haunting the on-call room?
“There was a notice saying the hospital director and local notables would be at today’s all-hands OT, so we were told to dress neatly...”
“A notice? Where?”
“In the group chat.”
“Oh.”
I had turned off group chat notifications.
“I’m screwed.”
The moment I opened the door to the main auditorium and went inside, my hunch was proven right.
Hundreds of medical staff and administrative employees were seated in rows, all of them in suits or neat semi-formal attire.
At least a few employees were dressed more casually.
‘The notice I checked on the way said neat, optional casual wear.’
Well, that’s a relief.
Just as we settled in, the Geoje Hospital director had just stepped up onto the podium and taken the microphone.
...
“Therefore, starting this week, excellent residents dispatched from the main hospital have joined us, and with the newly invited medical staff, a total of 42 people have joined us as of today.”
A boring speech began.
“Accordingly, the services that had been operating on a reduced scale will now begin normal operations...”
“...and after officially securing new training TOs through the Ministry of Health and Welfare two years from now, the current rotating-duty system will come to a complete end, and the foundation will be laid for us as an independent training hospital...”
“Yaaawn.”
A yawn slipped out.
In the end, that was the gist of it.
‘You’re all being used as fillers until we can recruit official residents two years from now.’
Park Se-young’s five-minute OT really was the best.
These kinds of showy events just don’t suit my personality.
A photo of a sharp-looking doctor appeared on the screen.
[Clinical Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine, Cheon Sang-jin]
Graduate of Yeonhui University College of Medicine
Clinical Instructor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Jeongsun University Hospital
Then the profiles of the other professors followed one after another.
Cardiology, neurosurgery....
I whispered toward the back of my roommate Son Jongun, who had somehow ended up sitting in the seat in front of me.
“Hey.”
“Huh?”
Son Jongun turned around.
“Take a look at the profiles. Looks like they lured a lot of former fellows in by dangling professor positions.”
“Seems so...”
Son Jongun nodded.
“Still, they all seem to be from good hospitals. Quite a few are from our main hospital too.”
“Exactly. They’re all incredibly young.”
For fellows who are just waiting for a TO to open up, an offer of a professorship at a new university hospital is a temptation hard to refuse.
Even if it’s in the Yeongnam region with no ties there, they can still get the professor title.
...
After that noisy, hour-long all-hands OT ended, and once we’d eaten dinner too, we were finally released.
If I were to sum up the key points of today’s OT, they’d be these:
Starting today, we take stroke and myocardial infarction patients 24/7!
The severe trauma team is officially up and running as of today!
There are a ton of doctors with professor titles for the first time this year!
That’s about it.
For the record, they didn’t literally say ‘We’re rookies’ during the OT; I inferred it from the profiles in the pamphlet they handed out.
Average age: late 30s to early 40s.
Is this an opportunity or a crisis?
“Let’s go. We need to get back, shower, and sleep.”
Head to the lodging, crack open a beer, and play a round of games...
Just as I was about to head down the hallway and leave the building,
“Um... professor!”
Someone called out to me.
I turned around and saw Baek Eun-seo.
There stood an utterly unfamiliar Smart Baek—basically, she was absurdly fidgety.
“Uh... what? Did you leave something behind?”
“Uh, I, um...”
Baek Eun-seo swallowed dryly.
“Uh, um, I, uh... I have a few things I’d like to say to you, professor...”
I had a bad feeling about this.
Or could it be...?
This kind of cliché is usually either a love confession or a confession that you screwed something up.
But we’re comrades.
So there was no way Baek Eun-seo would be confessing to me.
Did she mess something up?
But she hasn’t even had her first shift here yet.
“It’s not really appropriate here, so... let’s walk! Outside!”
“?”
“Let’s go!”
She didn’t even wait for my reply and strode ahead.
“Uh... yeah... y-yes? Then... let’s do that, junior...”
I ended up following Baek Eun-seo in a daze.
What on earth was she trying to say?
‘She’s not going to say my hoodie is way too embarrassing, is she?’