As my last job shadow I was happy to have the opportunity to do something that extended outside of my area of study for the year. Mrs. McCleery allowed us to shadow wherever we wanted for our last job shadow. I took this opportunity to shadow Cammie Wait’s mentor, Justin Edmonson. He is a physician's assistant in the Spring Hill Hospital emergency department. I enjoyed being in contact with him because he is highly responsive to messages and incredibly welcoming. He made organizing this last job shadow incredibly easy and it was a pleasure to get to follow him around for a shift.
I shadowed him on a Sunday afternoon on his 4pm - 1am shift. I really didn’t know what to expect because I had never been to an emergency room before and this was quite a stretch from what I had been previously studying. I met him in the ambulance bay and we jumped right into it. Within the first 10 minutes we had seen 2 patients, one of which was in for an infected cut that happened over a week before. I soon picked up on the flow of the emergency room and Mr. Edmonson made it easy because he works on a “see 3, chart 3” philosophy in order to keep up with his charting. One thing that I didn't realize was the amount of charting that was done in the ER. Charting seemed to be half of the job and Mr. Edmonson moved so fast with his typing that I was having trouble keeping up with who and what he was writing about.
It was a pretty slow night. There weren't any “juicy” lacerations that Mr. Edmonson was wishing I could see. However, I did get to see a broken hip. An elderly lady had fallen off her front porch. When we were examining her we noticed that her left foot was almost 6 inches shorter than her right, so we knew her hip was broken before the x-rays even came back. The image of the x-ray is posted below.
Mr. Edmonson told me to beat it at around 11:30 pm because it was so slow and I had to be up for school the next morning. He did extend the offer to come back to shadow any time and I will definitely take him up on the offer if I have the opportunity. I really enjoyed getting to know Mr. Edmonson enjoyed learning about how the emergency room works. I would love to visit again soon, just not in an ambulance.
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