Basingstoke Hospital Work Experience - Day 3

I really enjoyed today, I think it was the best day so far. We were constantly 'on the go' from the moment we started to the end of the day (excluding my obligatory lunch break!), and it has definitely worn me out.

I was shadowing the same porter that I was with on Monday afternoon for the whole day today and it was certainly exciting. I found that we spent most of our time transporting patients (my favourite job, as I'm sure you know by now) to x-ray from the emergency department and back again. I enjoyed chatting to the patients wherever possible too as well as the relatives, because I know that it's just as important to keep them happy and comfortable as it is the patients themselves. We also did a transfer to CT and back and I had the privilege to watch the images come up on the screen as it was being done. It really is amazing what these machines can do!

Also, I managed to catch a glance at a few of the x-rays that were being taken. There was a small child with a painful elbow which stuck in my mind today because although I didn't actually see the patient herself I did see the x-ray. It was very interesting what the radiographer was explaining, that the rather prominent and nasty-looking gap between the humerus and the lower arm bones was not actually a break at all. She said that in small children because the bones aren't yet fully developed there is just muscle tissue holding these bones in place so in fact, it was nothing to worry about.

I had never thought that children's bones were so different to adults' bones, so I found out some more. I discovered that a child's bones are much less brittle than those of adults, so quite often they will either just bend instead of break (plastic deformation), or they will slightly buckle as a result of the impact. This is completely different from adult bones which will much more easily have a clean fracture. In other cases the outer, more dense layer the cortex can fracture but leaving the cancellous bone (more spongy layer) unharmed causing what is known as a greenstick fracture. When my friend broke her arm years ago she told me she had a greenstick fracture, so it's satisfying now to know what it actually means!