Neonatology

The introduction

Hello everyone, I hope that you all are doing well!

This is just another article for you today and I’m really glad, that I have to write them to share some things with people all around the world, because, you know, “sharing is caring” _ now, that phrase just popped up in my head this second and I don’t really know why I said it, however, I said it and now that I’ve said it, you can think, that I’m crazy or something, but it’s just something that you may bump into on Facebook, and, you know, when you bump into something pretty often, that thing just gets into your head and you just remember it and sometimes it can pop up and remind you of itself, if you know what I mean.

Anyways, now I want to tell you about this clinical subject, that we chose to study this semester. Well, my father used to tell some stories about him working in a neonatology department and he finished the pediatric faculty and everything and he has the right to work with children and newborns and stuff like that and it seemed pretty interesting to know and see the neonatology up close.

So, when they told us, that we had to choose between those listed subjects, which one we wanted to study during that one week or so, we chose neonatology,I mean, there were four of us, who chose the neonatology. The other subjects were the emergency medicine, radiologic biology or something like that, laboratory studies and that’s it.

At first, I thought that emergency medicine would be very interesting, however, that thing you can study whenever you want, because there are always many training programs and workshops and stuff like that to teach you how to behave in emergency situations and what to do, besides, we sort of studied the first aid and stuff like that last year, so that, it would be better, if I chose something that I wasn’t very aware of. That seemed to be neonatology, I guess, besides, we really needed to study it, because there are tasks from neonatology on the exams or residency and stuff like that, as I know.

So, we had this pediatric surgery in Zhvania clinic during that periodand after that we had to go nearby in Tsitsishvili clinic for the neonatology. It was pretty easy for us, because they were next to each other and when we finished the pediatric surgery, we would just take a few steps and we were already in Tsitsishvili clinic right away. There were many newborns there and we would go on rounds and see them and ask the mothers some questions about them and stuff like that. It was a pretty good one week if we look at it that way, however, it was pretty hard, too, because we had lots of things to do, and, besides, we finished all those things pretty late and then we had to go home and study and we practically didn’t have time for anything else. So, it was a tough week, if you ask me. However, the subject was really interesting and we learned a lot during that curation.

Tsitsishvili clinic

Well, Tsitsishvili is a pretty large clinic. It’s on Lubliana street, I mean, the end of it, where all those other clinics and hospitals are, too. There are always so many people and the environment is very clean and everything’s just tidied up and smartly decided. This lady told us, that there they have all kinds of things for diagnosting and caring and stuff like that, except for the neurosurgeon. She told us that they had two neurosurgeons, but they got sent to Iashvili Children center. However, all the other specialists were there and they were able to treat newborns right away. That is really good, because when everything’s located at the same place, it’s really comforting for everyone, especially for patients, who don’t need to go from place to place to get the analysis done and treatment and everything, you know. it’s really hard to do that, and to go from one place to another, just to see another doctor or have your blood sample taken and stuff like that. It’s always better, everything to be in the same place, so that the patient can go to one place and get all the things done and come back home satisfied. Although, patients are not often satisfied totally, but still…

Well, we saw all those newborns with some problems there and some of them were even better and some of them were fine to go home and stuff like that. There was this one boy, who was pretty large for his age and he was all active and stuff like that and he had had some problems with the respiratory tract, however, he was better now and he was waiting to be sent home. I’m not much of a children type of human being and I don’t really feel comfortable around children, well, around newborns, I must say, however, this boy was a bit older and it was okay, I guess. It’s not my thing working with newborns and children, if you ask me. I prefer other stuff, you know.

So, one day we got a chance to go upstairs in the reanimation unit and see newborns there. Well, that is a pretty bad place, because there are children with more severe problems and some of them may even not survive that and stuff like that, so it’s just really depressing seeing children in such conditions, you know. it’s another thing, when you see someone in the reanimation unit, but the children are not the same there. When you see a new life fighting hard to live and stuff like that, and despite all those things, they still have low chances of survival, kind of gets to you and depresses you, you know.

We saw all those children and some of them were even older than we thought, and some of them were in a pretty bad condition. There was this one with the hydrocephaly, who had his 5-th birthday that day and the nursing staff had all those balloons and decorations stuck on his wall and his bed. It was really beautiful and sad, at the same time, of course.

Well, we then had to prepare some presentations about some topics that we would choose and seeing that child got me the idea of making a presentation about the hydrocephaly and stuff like that and I had all those information looked up in internet and books and I got to know many things about the disease. Sometimes people get their normal lives with the help of shunting or ventriculostomy, however, sometimes it’s not that simple to have the normal life, of course, because you never know how the body will react to certain types of procedures. There are cases, when the body can’t even stand a simple procedure, not to mention the trepanation and stuff like that, you know. so that it’s really dependent on the body mainly and, of course, on the doctor and everything else. It’s like a chain, I mean, everything is depended on everything and they all make a circle and we all go on circles, I guess. There’s no getting out from there, if you ask me.

Anyways, this whole week we had to see those newborns and, at the same time, study some diseases and the important things you need to know in neonatology, because one week is not enough for anything, especially for studying neonatology, because there are so many little details about newborns and taking care of them, that you need to be really careful. It’s pretty hard to diagnose them and not to misdiagnose and sometimes mothers lie to doctors about certain things, and, then, of course, the doctors can be mistakenly led to another way, when , in fact, they should’ve gone the other way just because the mother lied about some small detail because she didn’t want to be embarrassed or something like that. The thing is, why we lie to the doctors? I guess, that’s because we don’t want to feel embarrassed about something in front of them, I mean, for example, there was something that you didn’t do and you lie to the doctor that you did do that thing, because you don’t want to get all embarrassed and stuff because of not doing it. that’s just something many people do and then they think about how they lied, however, they don’t want to tell the truth, because then they will be double embarrassed _ the first embarrassment and the other embarrassment will be because of the lie that they have told to the doctor. So that they just don’t say anything else, and this all can lead to serious consequences pretty often, if you want to know the truth. Well, what can we do?! It’s like a habit _ a really bad one, if you must. When you go to someone and you let that someone treat you and you kind of give yourself to them, you shouldn’t lie to them, of course, because that’s only going to hurt you and you might get yourself in a worse condition than you were until that. And then you might even blame the doctor for not treating you properly, when it all actually is your fault and you are the one responsible for everything that has happened to you just because you didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of the doctor!

Well, in other words, I wanted to share my experience in Tsitsishvili clinicand the neonatology department. We had a pretty good week there and it was a different curation, because there were only four of us from our group and , of course, there were other people from other groups, and, if you want to know the truth, there were many of us. I mean, there were about 20 of us there , I guess, because many people wanted to study neonatology and many of them chose neonatology, so that we had to be separated into smaller groups to go into newborns’ rooms and check them out and talk to their mothers and see them and everything. You know, it’s impossible for the 20 people to rush into a room and everything. It’s just really freaking the mothers out, besides, the rooms are not that large to hold the capacity of 20 people being in there. The good thing was, that we were kind of separated into halves, because we went there earlier than the other half of the group, because they had traumatology in another clinic, which is not very close to Tsitsishvili clinic, so that, they would come one hour late or so, so that we would do our stuff and then we would be free and then they would go into those rooms and see the patients and it was pretty good, if you ask me.

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