I’m sorry that we couldn’t save you
Five days into my emergency medicine clerkship, I had experienced a lot of firsts: My first participation in a code, my first CPR compressions, and my first patient death. This was specifically a code blue for a patient with pulseless cardiac arrest.
An elderly woman was brought in by her family after not feeling well for several days and quickly became unresponsive. As the room flooded with staff, my upper-level resident …