I head to work at my new locums job on the California coast. Summer 2015 is going to be a great one, I think to myself. I make the turn into the hospital parking lot, and a rusty old Trans Am cuts me off. I slam on the brakes to the soundtrack of screeching tires. Geez, I think to myself. It’s …
After a drowning: An impossible question a doctor faces
We all went into medicine to save lives. Deep within even the most cynical of us, is still that pre-med hopeful that believes we can and should restart each non-beating heart, make the non-breathing breathe and fill with blood those who’ve bled, filling them back with life. We expect that a patient’s condition will improve while under our care, or at …
To the doctors who have lost patients. This is for you.
I walk out of the patient room. My eyes stare at the computer screen. I’m behind, way behind. I roll my head on my neck. My neck feels tense, and I have a headache. It’s been a long week. I need a vacation. Hurry up, click-click-click this computer, I think to myself. Dammit, is this EMR really freezing up again?
I look …
Even if no life was saved, an ER physician makes a difference
In an article entitled, ”Why the ER admits too many patients,” Dr. Michael Kirsch tries to explain that emergency department admissions are inflated due to emergency physicians acting in their own self-interest. Many emergency physicians have read this and taken offense, feeling that his assertions point unfair blame on them for a significant portion of excesses in medical care and costs. I share this visceral reaction in part, but …
Emergency physicians are blamed for a broken health system
I was a work today and I was given this message, “ —–’s husband called and wants you to call back right away! He sounded very upset. His wife died.”
Uh oh, I thought to myself, this is never good. It was a patient I remembered well, that I had seen repeatedly for a chronic problem, and who always came with her husband. We seemed to get along well. I didn’t …
A simple thank you makes all the frustration worth it
I can’t tell you that the “patient satisfaction obsession” is suddenly going to focus on patient health over profits and start being applied fairly to doctors and nurses.
I can’t tell you that someday politicians, administrators and insurance companies will wake up and see things the way you and I do.
I can’t tell you that someday, all the demands for inappropriate medications, tests and treatments will end.
I can’t tell you that …
Thank you: You make a damn big difference to this world
All patients should be treated with professionalism and respect. We all want our patients leaving our care happy, healthy and satisfied, if at all possible. However, sometimes patients don’t leave an emergency department very happy or satisfied. Sometimes the doctor could have prevented it, but many if not most times, such dissatisfaction has little if anything to do with what the …
The focus on patient satisfaction is enough to make you sick
I open my car door to walk in to work. I’ve never heard crickets as loud as the ones this summer in Georgia. A wall of steam-heat blasts me simultaneously as a giant bzzz! bzzz! dive-bombs my ear. Man, it’s hot in Georgia. And the bugs! I think to myself. I walk slowly towards the ED doors, barely moving, but still breaking a sweat. I walk through the double doors now …
A case of paralysis, cured in the emergency department
Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’, I just might tell you the truth.
– Bob Dylan
I just read an interesting post by Dr. Jennifer Gunter. Apparently, the entirety of what we are doing here at Dr. Whitecoat, and on internet communities and blogs like Student Doctor Network and Sermo, is unethical, according to the General Medical Council in Britain. How dare we not use our real names on social media as physicians and …
Anonymous blogging is needed for physicians to blow the whistle
My shift is over, and I’m ready to head out the emergency department door. When I walked in 12 hours ago, the department had 20 waiting patients. I look up at the monitor and after 12 hours of trying to wrestle the department under control, not only is it not under control, now we’re 25 patients deep in the weeds. My partner Dr. Jim looks at me and says, “Get …
A ruptured eardrum turns out to be something much more
Off I go to work a few shifts at a desperately understaffed rural hospital in a state far away. The rental car GPS leads me to the ED address and it’s not there. All that is there is what looks like a small supermarket with a funeral home next door. I see a security guard in the parking lot. He has a lump in his cheek and a badge that says “Sam.” …
Inspired after seeing my 5-year-old patient
My kid and I are outside in the front yard blowing bubbles, enjoying the blue skies and 70 degree weather when she says, “Cool Daddy! Look, there’s a police car coming down the street. Oh, cool! I think he’s coming to see us!”
Uh, oh, I think to myself. Despite my kid’s excitement, I know that rarely does anything good come delivered by a policeman. My wife is inside, my one …
Why a malpractice win for doctors feels like a great loss
My first night shift in a stretch of 7 was almost over. It was 6:15am and I had to keep moving otherwise the minute I would stop, my eyelids would drop like two ton shades and I’d fall asleep. That never makes for a good drive home after a night shift.
“Got time to see one more?” asked Jenny the nurse.
“Do I have …
The baby had a seizure: Why was the mother smiling?
Since the massacre of innocent school children and those that gave their lives educating and trying to protect them this past Friday at Newtown Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, I’ve struggled to make sense of this calamity as much as much as anyone.
As a physician who has worked to save the lives of sick and injured children, and as a father of children the same age as those massacred in …
The only words that explain Sandy Hook: Pure evil
The 2012 Presidential election is over. Obamacare is the law of the land and is certain to remain so. There was tremendous uncertainty not knowing whether the law would be repealed, revised or remain. Many of us opposed the bill, and there certainly are negatives. Like it or not, it is time to “get over it,” and not a second later than now. …
How Obamacare will create a new normal for medicine
I was driving home from a night shift and the scorching sound of Texas guitars flamed out of my car speakers. The group ZZ Top was old, but the song was new. It went like this, “25 lighters on my dresser, yessir. You know I gotsta get paid.”
Mostly, I was shocked that any members of the band ZZ Top were still alive, …
An unexpected tip after treating a gang member in the ER
Some cases burn into your brain like a hot branding iron, for whatever reason, and never really leave. This was one of those cases.
One hectic morning before my shift, my wife and I rushed around the house trying to get our kids ready for school. On this day, my daughter was to go on a field trip where the teachers would walk the kids through the city to the local …
My worst nightmare was not coming true, someone else’s was
Good, it’s about time that these greedy doctors get smacked down for being the financial rapists that they are. Medicine in this country is the biggest, most destructive SCAM going on today. Doctors think they are entitled to RIDICULOUS amounts of money for simple routine procedures.
– Johnathan Blaze
It is generally agreed upon that the more one values a good or service, the …
To the patients who resent greedy doctors
1. A 40-year-old female sees her family physician for burning chest pain after she eats hot peppers. She had it only once while exercising. Her family physician sends her to the emergency department and she gets admitted for chest pain. Rather than going home with treatment for her GERD, she ends up dead. This never should have happened, but the family never learns what really killed her.
2. A 33-year-old father of …
Cause of death: Defensive medicine
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