Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Cardiology Fellowship... EP lab and Consult SVC

Throughout the summer I am interning at LIJ hospital in the Cardiology Department for 10 weeks. I am lucky enough to have received the opportunity to observe a different area of Cardiology each week and shadow various Doctors, Fellows, and Nurse Practitioners throughout the day to learn about what the typical day is like for the Cardiology team. During my first two weeks of the internship I shadowed in the ElectroPhysiology Lab (EP lab) and the Cardiology Consult Service.
In the beginning of each week the Cardiology team meets for a morning conference to discuss how the weekend went, and makes plans for the week to come. On the first day of my internship I started out meeting everyone at the morning conference then jumped right into a bunny suit, which is a sterilized outfit that allows me to observe procedures without possibly harming the patient, and watched my first generator change in the EP lab. It really fascinated me to see how small such an important device can be and that the procedure is done quite quickly. Throughout the rest of the week I observed a few pacemaker implantations and a cardio version as well. For those of you that don’t know what a cardio version is, it occurs when a patient has an irregular heart rate, and this procedure is done to shock the heart in an attempt to reset their heart rate to a safe rhythm. I also followed a Nurse Practitioner to observe the post procedure and learned how defibrillators and pacemakers are controlled.
The next service I followed was the Cardiology Consult service. In the cardiology consult service I learned about the many reasons people are placed under Cardiologists care, and the different tests done in order to determine the best source of treatment for the patient. One interesting procedure I learned about was hypothermia treatment for patients that have a cardiac episode; the hypothermia treatment is performed by cooling the body after stabilizing the patient’s heart in an attempt to preserve brain function, and has been shown to be quite effective. Throughout this week I also was able to listen to a patient’s heart that had a heart murmur, and feel their unique pulse.
These first couple weeks I have had a great time and have learned so much. I can’t wait to experience the next 8 weeks of the internship!

Jennalee Trombley

1 comment:

  1. I have read your post.It is very informative.In this post,We realize the importance of a cardiology fellowship.I am waiting for next post.

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