The girl seizes.
Her body torques and twists and jerks about like a snake trapped on an electric fence. She flops back and forth on the gurney before us, her pale forehead glistening with sweat, her brown hair wetted black from the effort of muscle contractions that threaten to tear apart her tiny frame.
Trauma room two is silent save for the gluck-gluck-gluck of her …
Break seizure break. I repeat it in my mind. Again. And again.
The following article is satire.
In the first application of a new “reverse AMA” system put into place to improve patient satisfaction, a patient was admitted to the hospital for the first time against the wishes of her treating ED physician. Constance Dolor, a 37-year-old morbidly obese patient with chronic unexplained pain and a frequent visitor to the emergency department, became the first person in known history to be admitted the …
Patient refuses ED discharge: Admitted to the hospital against medical advice
It came out of nowhere. One of those life lessons that I didn’t know I needed to learn. Until I did. There I was, at a weekend business retreat, hobnobbing with a group of women executives. Feeling only slightly out of my element. Trying to blend in.
There was a break in the meeting. And what happened next made me rethink how …
Doctors being too nice leads to their burnout
Behind every doctor is a little boy or girl who once watched helplessly. Maybe it was her father or grandfather who suffered under the weight of a disease that was deemed all but incurable. Perhaps her own skin was battered and bruised by the repeated trauma of an unrelenting tourniquet. She swore that when (if) she got older she would protect the innocent from such things. Her vow was the …
This is who is behind every doctor
Over the course of pre-professional and professional education, my colleagues and I have had numerous moments of self-doubt. Would the next organic chemistry exam eliminate my 3.99 GPA? Would the MCAT decide what medical schools would immediately ignore me without ever meeting me? Would the sheer volume of material weed out the persons sitting next to me in medical school or …
I’m not apologizing for my part-time role in medicine
Medicine is obsessed with numbers. Or rather, journalists and medical administrators are. Here are two related examples of how large a grain of salt one must put on numbers.
Cardiac surgical procedures, like everything else in medicine, have quality indicators. One of these is what we doctors call “30-day mortality.” What this term means is that surgeons are evaluated in part on how many of the patients they operated on died …
The obsession with numbers in medicine: It’s time to stop
Question:
My family (including two small children) and I are relocating this summer for my husband’s new job after seven years of living in the same area for residency and fellowship to a city where I know no one. I am scared about leaving our support network of friends and family nearby. Can you offer advice on starting over in a new place?
Answer:
I would guess that almost every physician family has …
Coping with a move: A medical marriage Q&A
An iconoclast must not only have abundant common sense but the gift of the gab to state the obvious. Simply stating won’t do. You must rub it in.
My favorite iconoclasts are Peter Skrabanek and Thomas Szasz. Skrabanek was a general practitioner who authored Death of Humane Medicine and Rise of Coercive Healthism. Szasz, a psychiatrist, who volunteered that he entered psychiatry to unveil its pseudoscience, is the Voldermort …
Heal the ill but don’t hound the well
As a fellow in cardiology, you sign up to be part of a specialty that can involve emergencies.
As a first-year fellow, usually you are running things by other senior fellows and attendings, and typically you are not the first person to make a decision on a plan. At times, though, there can be an exception to that rule, and it is …
The day that I truly became a cardiology fellow
Eonia I Mnimi (Eternal Memory)
– Greek Orthodox Funeral Blessing
“Have you ever seen anyone die before?” my cousin asked me, from across the bed.
“Sure I have, plenty of times,” I answered.
We were flanking her father, my uncle (really, my mother’s cousin, but extended Greek families are complicated; suffice it to say that our families are very close). He had just taken his last breath.
***
My uncle had been declining for several years with Lewy …
The last breath can be seen as a the passage into eternity
When he and I first met, he told me that he had a doctoral degree in psychology, was the CEO of the jail, and could speak 13 languages. To demonstrate, he said, “Hong tong ching chong lai tai!” He then punched the door to his cell and shouted, “GET THE F-CK OUT OF HERE, B-TCH!”
I did.
The next week, he answered my questions about the pencil drawings on his walls.
“My name …
One of the greatest rewards in health care
Ever heard of a doula?
Doula is an ancient Greek word that translates as “woman who serves.” Specifically, it’s come to mean someone who serves as a birth attendant, a person trained in childbirth who acts in support of a birthing mother. A doula provides knowledge, comfort, and an extra pair of hands — whether it’s to provide nourishment or massage, or help a mother find a comfortable position.
As you may …
Being a nurse is one of the most important jobs in any society. It is also one of the most respected. Public opinion polls consistently rank nurses as the most trusted profession — usually ranking well above physicians. And it’s for good reason. Patients in hospital may forget who their doctor is, but they will rarely forget their nurse. The doctor …
Nurses are the superheroes of health care
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A couple of years ago, I asked a friend of mine how she met her husband. It was at a bar, and when she asked his occupation he replied, “I work for the city.” She took that to mean he was a construction worker. They began dating and quickly fell in love. Much to her surprise about a month into their …
8 reasons why you should marry a female physician
Dwight Frost had all the risk factors, plus he had already had a stroke several years ago. His blood sugars were too high, his lipid profile was near the top of the class, he still smoked a cigar now and then, and his blood pressure hovered around 200. He also seemed a little vague about which medications he actually took and which ones he didn’t.
He spoke rapidly with a slight …
What this patient needs for a normal blood pressure
I understand that there is a difference between perception and reality. I also get that the kind of people one meets on a tropical vacation in the middle of March are of a certain economic and sociopolitical status.
Nonetheless, I am amazed at how history seems to repeat itself. Year after year, while sitting in the shade and relaxing by the pool, …
Our health system is changing, and it’s a damn shame
I walked into room 30 to find two eager sets of eyes awaiting me. One set belonged to a young man, late-twenties, muscular and imposing, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. His eyes were hazel brown, big and inviting, relieved at seeing my entry into their sheltered world. The other set of eyes, darker brown and magnified by her gold-stemmed glasses, belonged to my patient, a …
A thank you to a mother and son in the ER
American physicians have had it. We are retiring early, cutting back, changing careers, and moping in to work in astounding numbers. The typical pep talks, whether given aloud by medical directors and administrators or consisting of internal dialog occurring in the physician’s mind, are not working anymore. “You have it better than most people.” “You are still making good money.” “Your …
This is why physicians are burning out
Thomas Hobbes described life as pitifully “nasty, brutish, and short.” Thanks to the free market and the state, life is no longer a Hobbesian nightmare. But death has become nasty, brutish, and long.
Surgeon and writer, Atul Gawande, explores the medicalization of aging and death in Being Mortal. Gawande points to a glaring deficiency in medical education. Taught to save lives and fight death, doctors don’t bow out gracefully and say enough …
The vexing problem of dying for the medical profession
Outside of a Southern California hospital, an ER doctor is crouched down against a concrete wall grieving the loss of his 19-year-old patient. A paramedic snaps a photo of the tender scene. His coworker, a close friend of the doctor, posts the photo (with permission) online. Minutes after the photograph, the doctor returns to work “holding his head high.”
Thousands of people have …
Heart-wrenching photo of a doctor crying goes viral. Here’s why.
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