when i can see he's got some breathing on his own so he's not dead i have no experience in emergency room care or acute situations none do you have a problem i hear nothing the intern is like the lowest level apprentice they're just going to see an awful lot of patience let me go see if my patient died or not this is the big easy where it's easy to shoot people every one of us is dreading mardi gras [Music] mayhem don't come the key is to remain calm she can't breathe and you can scream you can breathe get [ __ ] up you just can't practice my defense you're going to get someone you're going to kill people hey i'm not liking this too much he's aspirating are you starting to feel some insanity this is not on camera no comment we went to new orleans to follow four young interns these are doctors who have just graduated from medical school through their first ever experience as doctors in an emergency room everyone has to rotate through the emergency room during their internship year i didn't know what i was going to see how hard it was going to be all i had heard was that this is really one of the most challenging times for interns we were in probably the craziest part of charity hospital we were in the accident room that's where anybody that has anything really nasty that happens to them in new orleans that's where they go [Music] we've been told that new orleans is a very violent city so when we first arrived here we were surprised to find that there's only one place in the whole city that handles all the serious traumatic injuries like gunshots and stabbings the accident room at charity hospital today is the first day of all of the interns new rotation so it's their first day in the accident room it's our first day as well and right now we are heading over to orientation for all the um february interns we're going to be meeting in the ortho room right down there in like two minutes are you ready nice to meet you how you doing the interns we're following are all working towards different specialties this is actually the first time that they're going to be working as doctors in the emergency room okay i'm dr hubbell i'm director of the accident room and i'm going to orient you to what you can expect your responsibilities to be this month i don't know what it's going to be like all the other interns who've done accident rooms so far said it's fun i don't know what that means five percent of the people will be what you might call challenging to deal with one of the things i'm not looking forward to is a lot of patients that come in the accident room here charity are drunk they're belligerent they're hostile they're mean or they're crazy or some people are just not very nice from convicted felons to to you know iv drug using grandmothers despite all of those things remember that you're supposed to be the professional half of the doctor-patient relationship part of what you're here to learn this month is how a doctor would deal with those situations i don't know if i'm the bad boy but i try to be fair i try to be nice but you know i try to take a minimum of crap from people and i always speak up and absolutely positively do not to a patient's face or when talking to your friends use any terms that are derogatory and i'm talking about terms like troll and dirt bag and scumball and stuff like that you can't do that here all right let's go everyone forward here an empty room four doesn't look so foreboding but this is where heidi will marella and clay will be dealing with the most serious life or death issues on a daily basis we do have a fair number of mba stabbing shooting when you hear people yelling room four or five minutes or whatever you need to drop what you're doing immediately unless you're saving somebody's life the emts are going to roll the patient right up alongside the bed and everybody just descends on the patients and does their job if even half of what i've heard about the accident room is true it is going to be nuts i forgot to sort of call roll this morning so let me know if you're here dr hoffman yeah and what's your first name heidi you see everything here to charity so there's part of me that's scared of what i'm going to see william urrell i have no fears at all i'm looking forward to it i'm really looking forward to it clayton overton i just like it it gets my juices going it gets the adrenaline pumping mirella sir nylon i guess accident room could be a crazy place but that doesn't scare me yeah i'm always up to a challenge well then let me get you hooked up with the charge residents and get to work after the orientation there was no graceful entrance into accident room life they were immediately handed their cases and expected to get cracking i have no idea what i'm supposed to be doing when do we examine the patient in the hallway no one's really giving you guidance i don't know there's one for next one i can't find one piece of paper that i'm looking for that's where like welcome to the accent room the interns have only just arrived in the accident room but they're about to be thrown right into the middle of their first trial by fire ready or not we've got three room fours coming in 36 year old male driver high speed motor vehicle accident he has that abrasion and a little puncture heidi's going into radiology about as far from emergency medicine as you can get and she seems to be the most concerned of all the interns about meeting the challenges of the accident room i mean it's like so different for like will or clayton is there surgery so this is like nothing for that have you ever been hospitalized before we're all looking for clay to be our guide in the accident room emergency medicine is his specialty this is why he became a doctor in the first place broken to you clay it looks swollen but uh i can't see any broken bones until i put on my x-ray glasses i i left the x-ray glasses at home what do we got though the person is a two-year-old with head trauma clay and heidi hadn't been there a half an hour before the first room four hit we got three room fours coming in with this call clay had to drop everything to help out in room four sixteen is automatic i am asking you if we are expecting any other victims from this accident absolutely doctor has one more victim that i know of she is requiring expectation at this time she was quite entangled she was awake and talking to me when i left the team he called me so far we just want to get ready what's the deal do you want any of us to do foley rectal and whoever uh either you two can work with me on this patient and you can work with marvel's on the third yeah take your picture okay gonna go with your third one i haven't put doctors often get limited information about the cases that are coming in all they know about this case is that it involves a car accident the male driver of one car smashed into another injuring a woman and a child okay this is my patient an approximate 35 year old male was trapped in the vehicle unrestrained driving massive damage to his side required heidi started working on the first patient that came in the driver who caused the accident a finger coming [Music] okay in spite of all her fears heidi really seemed to rise to the occasion amazingly well the woman injured in the accident arrived and clay started working on her go ahead give me some alcohol okay all right we're gonna go ahead and do the regular sam you're gonna feel a little pressure the pelvis is stable the rock all right wait a moment wait clayton yes pick a pulse there i couldn't feel pulsing it i was surprised to see how much trouble clay was having with this relatively simple procedure yes i need to put the body come on move when you do that just do the right the foot down and then continue don't don't go under now don't have to change the gloves are here he really seemed to be struggling trying to keep up with the pace yeah you got it okay we're back i had two tubes in there we still need those sorry okay i certainly uh felt like a big tool tonight a complete idiot getting involved in things that that i haven't seen in a good while it's just just horribly humbling this is going to be a little uncomfortable [Music] what a nice initiation so i feel like it is it's like hazing almost i feel like this naive accident room virgin being quickly initiated to life here yeah that was that was kind of a rough uh first hour i was hoping to be able to watch one first before i had to do so you feel a little incompetent on the first one thank goodness you know he's okay that's at least good i mean there's many people that come in here who are a lot worse shaped they're gonna code on the table and die this is pretty much confirming our worst expectations i think it'll get worse unfortunately i think it'll get worse hold still heidi's worst fears are about to be confirmed but after will gets his first case it seems like he'd gladly trade places with her this really gets his leg up like this today she fell down again and had some bleeding down below when it comes to getting their assignments the interns find themselves totally at the mercy of their residents it's the pregnant patient that fell down is she going to be your patient or not patient she's going to be my patient what you guys need some experience with pregnant women i don't can you do pregnant women fail and they get practiced well i'm saying well she has a fracture i'll be taking care of her she doesn't did you see the lesions on her legs even though marella is specializing in ob gyn will got the obstetrics case and he was less than thrilled there's like six women here that could have done this film whenever a big a big giant man with big hands does a pelvis man it's always like we're killing them you know what i mean i would never go to you yeah i know i wouldn't either i'm killing them and i hate it they'd be tensing up and then i just want to make sure so what happened to dad i was walking down stairs in my house and i fell down it wasn't like you felt like uh woozy or felt like you were going to pass out or anything it was just like you just tripped underwear yeah just hold on a second now i'm gonna insert this speculum man okay try to keep this leg up man try to keep this leg uh i know it hurts i it was very difficult to watch will struggle to figure out if this woman's pregnancy had been affected by her fall it was hard not to flinch every time this woman cried out in pain okay all right even though marella has to do her training all over again here she had been a practicing obstetrician in romania for four years so it was natural that she was the one that took the teaching role it's right there you see it okay you see it yeah okay it's i wouldn't call it slightly open there is a little very little amount of blood okay we can bring you down off of this room it did good very good marella determined that patient and baby were fine but will just seem relieved that the whole thing was over how was it i think he starts to like it yeah i just can't wait for the next one [Music] heidi's car accident victim is stabilized but the case is getting more complicated i don't think he was into i'm not sure how the cops are around him there must be a suspicion of intoxication with injury to the other people the other car i think he was the only driver of the car that somehow hit the other one that had the two passengers who came in the child the tragedies that come in often play out right next to each other in this case the driver who caused the accident was right across from a little girl who was in another car because he's not able to go to our breath test machine we're going to have one of the doctors draw blood here to send to the lab i need to draw blood so we can if we need to give you blood so we can do that all right yeah relax your hands when the doctor took your clothes and stuff off you they found cracking clothes you're gonna be booked additionally all right keep your hands still okay you're gonna feel a little stick okay wait man knock it off quick quick you can't move all right i'm moving hold still hold still it's almost over just a minute that's when you get sort of angry because the patient's not cooperating i mean if that needle would have flipped in just another direction or if i would have put my hand in a different direction i could have been stuck and this guy's a sure high risk of having hiv it's upsetting to me to see that because of his actions to innocent people have been hurt this has already been a long night but it's not even close to being over if she does they have to go rebooking with third-degree fetuses heidi's case seems to be going from bad to worse this is when you like get angry and you know and clay is facing problems he never anticipated tonight's not going too well i've made two a lot of mistakes okay i need for you to write up his route shidasu okay all gunshot wounds have to have a police report filed yeah okay i didn't don't recall if she had that on yet the normal sailing as the night were on it really seemed like clay was having a lot of problems trying to juggle all of his patients this patient from the beginning of the shift was kept waiting throughout the night waiting waiting waiting so what are you doing now thank you trying to fix my my paper errors tonight's not going too well i've made to a lot of mistakes clayton is very meticulous when he checks his patients and fills out his paperwork so it takes him a little longer than it does other interns to discharge patients you're pretty patient guys well i have no choice now to the splint yeah let's see these are the basic how-to books i bring these in for exactly these kind of situations why is it have somebody healthy do it who's available neither one are very good but i think i have an idea it could be worse oh man now that happened whatever okay what did they do you saw we had like three or four trauma patients come in sorry about that just get me out of here no one ever pegs me for er but i would like to think that a meticulous nature is an advantage in the emergency room you have to really pay attention to the details or else you'll miss important things so so i have to try and figure out how to find a compromise between the two certified the case of the drunk driver heidi was taking care of kept getting worse and worse that ladies loses her child who's looking forward nine weeks so it falls under golf a bit that it happens but if she does they'd have to go rebook him with third degree fetuses because of the killing of an unborn child this is when you like get angry and you know all patients are supposed to be treated with the same amount of respect and dignity but i don't know that in reality that happens when you see a case like this i have a lot more empathy and compassion for that woman who's pregnant and that child who is who are innocent victims than i do for that gentleman who is the perpetrator and yet he's still going to receive the same care that's just the way things work but we're all it's impossible to totally separate yourself emotionally from that i mean you can't don't take it off yet i got two questions for you what tell me how today works oh great went by so fast i loved it now i get to go work out every day yeah it was not that bad it was okay it's always nice to have a very slightly slow day on the first so people don't get depressed everybody here seems to agree that this is a pretty mellow day for the accident room i find that a little bit disconcerting because uh it didn't seem particularly mellow to me but i guess this can change so fast so i don't have that much hope i think uh you know certainly as mardi gras approaches things are going to get wild this this month will probably numb me the most of any month just because the kind of characters that come in here are the kinds who will make you more callous and jaded and cynical and you know that kind of stuff next time on eyewitness news [Applause] it's hard to believe that we've only been in the accident room one day the interns have barely gotten their footing and already they've been thrust into the most difficult challenges of emergency medicine and it's only the beginning cpr is in progress will faces his first code blue a patient whose heart has stopped beating heidi confronts the one thing more daunting than a seriously injured adult a child on the verge of death one really bad movement of his head he could you know end up paralyzed and clay deals with illness closer to home my wife took my boy in there he's got 105 fever which isn't responding to medicine