Chapter 188: Characteristics of Neurosurgical Patients
The patient burst into laughter upon hearing his words.
Teasing the patient to cheer them up, Cao Yong then proceeded to examine the forty-something-year-old male patient, and he took the opportunity to offer a word of advice, “After being discharged, you need to go to the rehabilitation department and persist in rehabilitation training.”
“I know, Dr. Cao. It’s best if I don’t have to see you again, right?” the patient asked with a laugh.
“You need to take your medicine properly and monitor your blood pressure at home, so you don’t end up time again,” Cao Yong chided the patient like a nagging old woman at that moment.
Who says surgeons have nothing to do after the surgery? The patient’s follow-up work continues. It’s like a mother taking care of her child.
The patient had recovered enough to be discharged, and now it was time to free up the bed for new patients. Huang Zhilei jotted down notes, reminding the staff below that discharge summaries need to be written, and discharge prescriptions need to be prepared. In the meantime, Cao Yong chatted and laughed with the patient for a bit more.
Seeing his handsome smiling face, Xie Wanying seemed to understand why he loved to smile.
Because smiling, after all, can bring joy to patients. Neurosurgical patients are not like those in other departments; they require a lot of psychological adjustment post-treatment, as they have to face living the second half of their lives with a dysfunctional body. Therefore, neurosurgical patients are the most prone to depression.
After chatting with bed number twenty-two, Cao Yong led his team to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth patients, who were conscious post-surgery but couldn’t walk and were confined to their beds.
On his first day back to the department for rounds, Cao Yong personally conducted a physical examination on the patients to put his mind at ease.
Neurosurgical examinations have their unique features. Simply put, they treat the brain, and any functions related to the brain need to be examined. For example, patients’ speech, eating ability, whether there is pain in the head and face, and whether the limbs can move or have any sensation, and so on. These are layman’s explanations, but in reality, there are a plethora of professional terms.
Tests for motor dysfunction include muscle strength tests, consciousness evaluation scores, memory tests, and so on. Sense of smell, vision, hearing, and the like might seem like concerns for the ENT department, but they are also relevant for certain neurosurgical diseases and thus warrant examination.
Patients with hemiplegia often exhibit one-sided deviation when sticking out their tongue, and the patient’s swallowing action is critical to whether they can feed themselves. Those with dysphagia must be given a feeding tube, otherwise, there is a risk of the patient choking.
Detailed examinations from all aspects are crucial; a single oversight could cost a patient their life. Although these patients are hospitalized and have already undergone comprehensive examinations, the current ward rounds are more of a recheck, which is relatively simpler yet requires attention to the patient’s progress and outcomes.
Senior doctors have the responsibility of teaching, and on days like today when there’s a bit of spare time, it’s possible to call medical students up to perform physical exams on the patients, pose questions to them, and discuss their responses briefly.
Today, Xie Wanying was responsible for carrying medical records behind her Senior Brother, having carried a total of eleven medical records since leaving the ward with him.
It must have been Senior Brother Huang’s intention to train her by having her carry the medical records during rounds, an activity usually done by medical students. But generally, when there are many records, they would be shared among several individuals. Xie Wanying thought that Senior Brother Huang must have gone through the same when he was younger, being trained to carry a dozen or more medical records by himself, so now he was training her the same way.
Medical students carry medical records to make it convenient for senior doctors who need to consult them during rounds to have immediate access. Therefore, Xie Wanying had to adjust the order of the medical records before and after the senior doctor examined each bed, ensuring the senior doctor could reach out and take the top record from her hands at any time, the very one they wanted.