clinic journal #15

So I experienced something pretty interesting today with my first patients health history. My patient presented himself with needing prophylaxis antibiotics for a joint replacment but Dr. Hopkins thought that since it had been like five years already that he didn't need it. I asked others in clinic and they said two years after a joint replacment and I thought that it was six years but we were about to call his physician just in case but then marie brought me back his updated health history and to our amazment, this patient had just had a stroke two weeks ago. So that was pretty interesting. Anyway, I talked to my patient about it and he said that it was only a slight one and that he went to the doctor and that his doctor said that he was fine and that they couldn't find anything wrong with him. Anyway, he was pretty upset that we couldn't treat him, according to Dr. Hopkins. Dr. Hopkins said to wait six months because any kind of stress could cause another stroke and maybe even a worse one. I kept trying to explain to my patient that we only have these policies in our clinic for his protection and for his own health. But he made sure that I knew that if he had a choice that he would prefer to have treatment today and that it was our institution that was preventing him from having treatment. Oh well, experience with all sorts of patients with all different personalities is good practice. We were joking around and said that we would walk out of clinic and find him like passed out in his car because we cause him undue stress by not working on him because he was so uptight about it and that we would be the ones to cause him to have another stroke but that did not happen, and it is not even a funny thought but it kind of made us laugh!