Lumbar Punctures:

So today I was involved in yet another attempt to perform a lumbar puncture. These procedures scared the heck out of me when we did them on adults let alone on these squirmy little babies. We had a super strong baby today who was not going to let us go for a free ride. We tried her in two different positions. I had the first go and it resulted in what one would call a bloody tap which got clogged up with clot. Then my senior resident had a go and out came the clear untainted CSF fluid.

I am really going to get over my wariness of performing procedures on wee babies if I am going to do this. I think it is mainly due to my lack of comfort with most of the procedures on such a small playing ground. I got to practice most of these procedures a number of times on a variety of rotations on adult hence I had time to become comfortable. I had never tried half of these on children before.