Medical School Bloopers

I thought I would celebrate the end of my third year of medical school by sharing with you a Top Ten List of my most embarrassing moments from the first three years. I hope I don't collect as many from my last year--but between visiting rotations and traveling for interviews, I won't hold my breath. Without further ado, enjoy.

Top Ten List of Medical School Bloopers

10. When I squirted myself in the face with the hand sanitizer at the door in full view of the patient and his wife. Slapstick humor: 1. My dignity: 0.

9. The time I nearly fainted in an examining room. The physician was interviewing the mother and patient while I leaned against the sink because there were not enough chairs in the room. I don't know if I locked my knees or if my blood sugar was low, but I got hot flashes, started sweating, and my vision flickered. I tried to wait it out and shifted position a few times before I finally excused myself to find a chair, a snack, and a drink of water. When I returned no one said anything, and the doc didn't ask me about it later, which was a relief. This is why, like any good hobbit, I eat second breakfast!

8. The time on the Labor & Delivery ward overnight that I was so excited to be "scrubbing in" to a vaginal delivery that I dropped my sterile gown on the floor, then put it on before securing my face mask, which I did--but only after clumsily donning my sterile gloves. The tech called me out on it afterwards, and I readily admitted it'd been a hot mess. The patient ended up needing an episiotomy, so I didn't even get to catch the baby.

7. The time I catheterized a woman's uterus instead of her bladder. And then the time that I, a resident, and a nurse tried to catheterize a patient on the operating table who didn't even have a bladder anymore. Finally someone lifted up his gown and noticed the urine-collection bag on his abdomen.

6. That time I fell off a rolling stool in the OR. When we started the case, the floor was still wet from mopping, and I had joked that it would be a miracle if I didn't slip and land on my head. There's a maxim in surgery, "don't stand when you can sit, and don't sit when you can lie down." Since I was observing, I grabbed a rolling stool and positioned myself in full view of the operation. While trying to shift my weight, I accidentally pushed the stool too far forward. I slid off the back onto the floor on my butt, sending the stool skidding toward the sterile operating tables and gowned-up surgeon. Thankfully she was able to stop it before it contaminated anything, and I wasn't hurt, although the nurses joked that they were so busy I had to do my own neuro checks q15 (every fifteen minutes) to watch out for concussion.









"His heart is stopping! Nurse, give me the defr... defibi... uh... defrib...defibiri..."

"What, Doctor? What?"

"Oh, never mind."











5. The time I tried to treat myself for a urinary tract infection with left-over antibiotics from my medicine cabinet and nearly overdosed on a muscle relaxant instead. It was the week before I sat for Step 1 (my first board exam), and I felt sure I should just get out of medicine right then and there, obviously having learned nothing from an entire year of pharmacology.

4. Did I ask a 44-year-old patient who had had a tubal ligation at 18 and a hysterectomy at 30 what she used for birth control? And when she told me "condoms," did I proudly include that information in my report to the attending physician, who promptly did a double-take? Yes, yes I did.

3. The time I gave myself acute kidney injury. I knew I was volume depleted from finishing my period and giving blood, but I wanted to bike 10 miles to and from the farmers market the next day, so I went ahead and ate the verrrry salty dinner Dear Husband had prepared, thinking the salt would help me retain fluid and increase my blood pressure in the morning. Instead, I woke up with periorbital edema (puffiness) so bad that I could barely open one eye. I ended up drinking ridiculous amounts of water to flush out my system.

2. The time I "diagnosed" an image on a medical website as pornographic. Here's the original copy from facebook:

The medical students and residents are crowded into the attending's office to go through a computerized dermatology case that involves a photo of a tattoo. Attending: Now what do you suppose it's a tattoo of? It is an idle question that has nothing to do with the case, which we've just collectively solved. Someone points out that it looks like a person. Someone else volunteers that it looks like an insect eating a man. It suddenly dawns on me: the "insect" legs belong to a woman, who is crouching in front of a man. "It's a blow job!" I blurt out. Silence in the room. Most of these people have just met me yesterday.
Attending: "Oh my goodness, I think you're right!" Verdict: It was a tattoo of Olive Oyl going down on Popeye.

1. The time I tried and failed to find a posterior tibial pulse in a patient's left leg. It was a prosthetic leg.