*stockedKNOWLEDGE_

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I just watched a replay of an episode on The Resident, a TV series that I watch every Friday night. Last Friday’s episode was a replay but what was shown the previous hour was 2 Fridays ago- an episode that I missed watching. In the episode, there was a young woman who is pregnant and was bleeding internally. The cause of the hemorrhage was unknown and the doctors suspected of bleeding varices. The woman was brought to the operating theatre and the surgeons opened her up. Suddenly, the blood pressure of the patient dropped tremendously. Since I had operating room experience (I was the OR nurse in the secondary hospital last 1999-2004), and based from what I learned when I was still a nursing student, internal bleeding may be a manifestation of ectopic pregnancy. I had that in mind while watching the series a while back. The actor/doctor went to the X-ray department and checked on the X-ray film of the patient. The surgeons were doing all means to raise the BP of the patient on the OR table. I talked aloud: “ECTOPIC PREGNANCY”. That was what the doctor (actor) found out in the X-ray film. So he rushed to the operating room and said, “There is an embryo in her right fallopian tube.” The surgeons clamped both sides of the tube and cut it (salpingectomy), and the BP went stable. My stock knowledge was challenged and I am glad I made my nursing diagnosis. It is through our clinical eye that we learn about the patients’ conditions. Good thing I have no stuck knowledge, yet.