Dr Claire McGroarty, emergency medicine consultant
I'M a consultant in emergency medicine at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. As one of four consultants on duty I will either be responsible for overseeing the entire department or in charge of a specific area such as resuscitation, head injury admissions, major medical conditions and minor injuries.
Patients can arrive by air ambulance. We receive a standby call and are given a brief synopsis which tells us their consciousness level, heart rate and blood pressure. It is just one snapshot as they leave the scene. Often you don't know whether they are still going to be alive in the back of the helicopter or exactly what to expect when the patient arrives in our resuscitation room.
Your heart is pounding and there is a bit of an exhilaration as well. This is why we specialise in emergency medicine, but there is a human in you that is scared for the patient too.
It can be tough to compartmentalise. We have to remain professional and focused on the task at hand, but at the same time it is about human frailty and if we weren't compassionate we would be terrible doctors. You can't suppress that part of you, but you have to control it to some extent.
When a trauma patient arrives it is a little like the Pied Piper and it can become crowded. We allocate roles so everyone has a clear idea of what they are expected to do. Everyone wants to help, but unfortunately not everyone can be in and around the patient at the same time otherwise it becomes chaotic. My role at that level is a bit of crowd control as well.
There is high intensity and everyone's adrenalin is flowing. After a patient leaves to go to the intensive care unit or theatre, there is a pause because everything stops suddenly. It is then we have a "hot debrief" where you thank everyone for their help, make sure they are all OK and take any feedback on how it went.
You see things that are nothing short of a miracle. There is a case in the new series of Scotland's Superhospital that involves a patient who has arrived from Loch Fyne, Argyll, by air ambulance following a head-on collision with a lorry. It is a heart-warming day when you can say to a family member that their loved one is going to survive against the odds.
There are cases that will never leave me. The more traumatic things I've had to do in my career I will never forget. The best way to deal with those is by talking to your colleagues. We work closely together – medical, nursing and administrative staff – and all lean on each other for support.
Away from my day job I'm a medical advisor on the TV series Outlander. A lot of that centres on the character Claire – played by Caitriona Balfe – and her evolution as a nurse from the 1940s who has been transported back to the mid-1700s in Scotland.
I advise on anything vaguely medical within the storyline such as amputations and resetting bones. There was a scene with an evisceration, where someone's bowel was out of their tummy, so I worked alongside the prosthetics and makeup department to ensure the wounds looked authentic.
What drew me to emergency medicine is that no two days are alike. We look at everything from orthopaedic injuries to obstetric, gynaecological and neurological conditions. It is dealing with extremes of age from a day-old baby to someone coming up to their hundredth year. I describe myself as a jack-of-all-trades and the master of many.
Scotland's Superhospital begins on BBC One, Monday, 9pm
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