Bowel obstruction is a common reason for admission or complication of patients under the surgical team, but doctors don’t frequently get that much exposure to it in medical school. It is a condition in which the normal passage of intestinal products is impaired. It can affect both large and small bowel. Bowel obstruction can be
You will frequently get calls regarding nausea & vomiting: many patients present with it or develop it because of their diagnosis or treatment. You must consider anything concerning that could be causing it and give appropriate treatment for the underlying cause, correct any electrolyte disturbances & dehydration due to it in addition to antiemetics. Certain
When you are on call, you will often get a bleep about a patient with abdominal pain. Abdominal pain can be a bit of a minefield and it is easy to get bogged down with all the possibilities. The key is to be systematic and take a clear history and thorough examination so that you
Constipation is one of the most common complaints in hospital, especially on the geriatric wards.Failure to treat constipation can lead to longer hospital stays and increased morbidity. What’s normal? Anything from 3 times per day to 3 times per week is normal for adults. What causes it?Many things cause constipation, most commonly in hospital, it
When assessing pain, ensure you begin by taking a history to characterise the pain as neuropathic pain, inflammatory pain and oncological pain all respond to different analgesia. SOCRATES is a helpful way to systematically take this history as it will help identify any serious underlying disease that is causing the pain and whether any further
There are certain situations where you need to prescribe IV fluids which vary from fluid resuscitation to maintenance fluids if a patient is nil-by-mouth (NBM) (e.g. pre-operatively, ‘drip & suck’ for bowel obstruction, acute pancreatitis, recent stroke with unsafe swallow). The NICE Guidance CG174 Intravenous fluid therapy in adults in hospital contains an excellent PDF
