General Medicine 4 min read
Pleural Aspiration: What an Intern Needs to Understand Before Assisting
Anatomy, why ultrasound guidance became standard, how complications present, and why this is not a procedure to attempt unsupervised.
Index
MBBS Intern
Ward and OPD practice — procedures, prescribing safety, and talking to patients.
General Medicine 4 min read
Escalating When You Are Worried and Nobody Else Is
The intern is often the first person to notice a patient is deteriorating and the least able to make anyone act. This…
General Medicine 5 min read
Breaking Bad News: What to Actually Say
Real sentences for the hardest conversation, why silence is a technique, and the phrases that land badly however kindly meant.
General Medicine 4 min read
Intravenous Fluids: Choosing Them and the Errors That Cause Harm
Fluids are prescribed more casually than any other drug and cause more avoidable harm than most.
General Medicine 4 min read
Nasogastric Tube Placement: The Confirmation Step That Prevents a Never Event
Misplaced feeding tubes kill people. The insertion is straightforward; the confirmation is the part that must never be improvised.
General Surgery 4 min read
Urinary Catheterisation: Consent, Asepsis and Knowing When Not To
The commonest avoidable hospital infection starts here, and the commonest reason is a catheter that was never needed.
General Medicine 4 min read
Peripheral IV Cannulation: Why the First Attempt Matters Most
Vein selection, the errors that cause failed attempts, and recognising extravasation before it causes injury.
General Medicine 4 min read
Venepuncture and Blood Cultures: Getting a Sample That Means Something
Why order of draw matters, what haemolyses a sample, and why a contaminated blood culture is worse than no blood culture.
General Medicine 4 min read
Recognising Anaphylaxis: The Decision That Cannot Wait
How anaphylaxis actually presents, why the diagnosis is clinical, and the two errors that cause preventable deaths.
General Medicine 4 min read
Consent: What Makes It Valid and Where Interns Get It Wrong
Consent is a process, not a signature. The three requirements, and the situations where an intern should stop and escalate.