ER: A crash course in medicine

As I mentioned before I work in the emergency room at a local hospital. This is my first position in a hospital. I had been in medicine for some time as an EMT, but that was all pre-hospital care. And let's face it, there's only so much that you can do out in the field. I was brought in to work in the ER without knowing a damn thing about stuff like venipuncture and IV's and all that stuff. They really go by the philosophy "watch one, do one, teach one". By my second day at work I was drawing blood and starting IV's on patients. By the fourth day, I was forced to do it as fast as I could. My preceptor kept telling me, "your in the emergency room, seconds matter, and you need to get that line in fast!" By the end of my second week I was teaching a new girl how to start IV's and draw blood. They just kind of threw me in the water and it was sink or swim. Well, in my case I swam with ease. Still to this day I have only missed two IV's. I was happy when people that worked there for years were telling me I was like a natural. It made me feel really good because I will be doing this stuff for a long time. This was the first thing that actutally made me think for a second, "I think I'm going to make a good doctor". Now, I know you want some of the good stuff too. Yes, believe it or not, I did make a few dumb mistakes. The funniest one was happened one day with the thermometers in the rooms. As some of you may know, they use a probe thermometer that is the size of a walkie talkie. There are two different probes in it, one is red and one is blue. You take the probe, put on a sterile, disposable cover, and place it under the patients tongue like normal. Well....what no one ever told me is that the blue one was for taking the temp orally, while the red one was for taking the temp rectally. Yup, that's right, I gave a patient and oral temperature with the red probe. I felt like an asshole when the nurse told me about it later. Whoops!!