Emergency medicine

2,327 articles · Since 2004

Articles, page 18

We must address glaring disparities in treatment [PODCAST]

April 4, 2021Apr 4, 2021

"It is not enough to say we are anti-racist; we have to modify our systems to recognize that we have placed individuals of color at risk of poorer outcomes. Lack of insurance, lack of finances, or even the presence of…

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“It is not enough to say we are anti-racist; we have to modify our systems to recognize that we have placed individuals of color at risk of poorer outcomes. Lack of insurance, lack of finances, or even the presence of certain diagnoses may reflect less about the person and more about …

Physician voices

ER doctors use stories to connect with patients

Priya M. Sury, MD, DPhil

April 3, 2021Apr 3, 2021

The triage note noted that my next patient had an oxygen saturation in the 70s and was short of breath. He was exposed to a COVID+ contact several weeks ago. I put on my gown, mask, face shield, and gloves…

The triage note noted that my next patient had an oxygen saturation in the 70s and was short of breath. He was exposed to a COVID+ contact several weeks ago.

I put on my gown, mask, face shield, and gloves and walked into a room where the patient sat on the edge of his bed, bare chest heaving. He wore a blithe smile on his unmasked face. I glanced at the …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Life in a rural emergency department during COVID [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

March 17, 2021Mar 17, 2021

"I am grateful that I work in a small rural hospital that is like a family. I am grateful that my organization has done everything in its power to protect us… but I hope we can do better. I hope…

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“I am grateful that I work in a small rural hospital that is like a family. I am grateful that my organization has done everything in its power to protect us… but I hope we can do better. I hope medical workers have enough left within them to give their all …

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An ode to the differential diagnosis

Mercy Hylton, MD

March 17, 2021Mar 17, 2021

The differential diagnosis is a cornerstone of the profession of medicine which epitomizes physicians’ critical thinking skills. It is not an antiquated tradition of by-gone eras. The practice of medicine has been positively impacted in the past century by revolutionary scientific advancements, standardization of medical education, and transformative societal changes. Its overlap has provoked some unfavorable changes in the practice of medicine with the business of health care. The differential …

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An ode to the differential diagnosis

Physician voices

A new system for measuring the story of my life

Justin Sterett, MD

March 11, 2021Mar 11, 2021

Our lives are stories, and we are the narrators. The stories we tell have an arc across our lives as the plot, characters, and climax unfold. These narrative arcs are expected, for the most part, to follow a linear path defined by time. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how time flows through life and how we measure our life in relation to time. We have no grasp of …

Health policy

Emergency departments need to claim their role in the social safety net

Caitlin Ryus, MD, MPH

February 28, 2021Feb 28, 2021

A patient once told me, “I sit on the side of the road asking for change. People look right through me like I’m invisible. Food stamps aren’t enough. I can’t afford to exist and I want to die.” A man is dying of poverty — this is an emergency, but not one I have been trained to fix. I am an emergency medicine physician; I care for people on the …

Conditions and diseases

In the emergency department: Patients ravaged by mental illness

Anonymous

February 22, 2021Feb 22, 20215

The emergency department is fast-paced. Full of chaos. Incredible suffering. Frustration. Disappointment. Screams, tears, smiles. Reassurance. Good news. Bad news. Diagnoses. Failure to find a diagnosis. Getting a last-minute cardiac arrest coming in at 650 a.m., ten minutes before the end of your 12-hour, overnight shift – you have the energy and wherewithal to do the task, but to process the life that was lost? To truly realize the dead …

Conditions and diseases

A story of a gruesome farm accident

Ron Whitchurch, CRNA

February 18, 2021Feb 18, 2021

An excerpt from 50 Years in the OR: True Stories of Life, Loss, and Laughter While Giving Anesthesia. We were notified one cold winter’s afternoon in February that a farm accident victim with a bad leg injury was coming in…

An excerpt from 50 Years in the OR: True Stories of Life, Loss, and Laughter While Giving Anesthesia.

We were notified one cold winter’s afternoon in February that a farm accident victim with a bad leg injury was coming in from a small town twenty-five miles west of Bemidji.

When the ambulance arrived, they had a barely conscious young boy with his right leg wrapped in many layers …

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A story of a gruesome farm accident

Conditions and diseases

A story of esophageal variceal rupture

Ron Whitchurch, CRNA

February 7, 2021Feb 7, 2021

An excerpt from 50 Years in the OR: True Stories of Life, Loss, and Laughter While Giving Anesthesia. Chronic long-term alcoholism causes many health problems, not the least of which is cirrhosis of the liver. In advanced cases of cirrhosis,…

An excerpt from 50 Years in the OR: True Stories of Life, Loss, and Laughter While Giving Anesthesia.

Chronic long-term alcoholism causes many health problems, not the least of which is cirrhosis of the liver. In advanced cases of cirrhosis, the liver becomes full of scar tissue and its many functions are then impaired, causing blood circulation through it to be impeded, leading to esophageal …

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A story of esophageal variceal rupture

Conditions and diseases

A child’s cry through haunting eyes

Debbie Moore-Black, RN

February 2, 2021Feb 2, 2021

The emergency department. A haven for cardiac arrests and gunshot wounds and respiratory distress and overdoses and auto accidents and children’s sniffles and fever and coughs that won’t go away. The ED was easy access to many. And at times,…

The emergency department.

A haven for cardiac arrests and gunshot wounds and respiratory distress and overdoses and auto accidents and children’s sniffles and fever and coughs that won’t go away. The ED was easy access to many. And at times, it was an easy fix not to pay the bill upfront or to be anonymous with your problem.

As much as I loved emergency nursing, it was always the children that left …

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A child’s cry through haunting eyes

Conditions and diseases

Falling in love during a pandemic: a lesson in self-soothing

Fae Kayarian

January 30, 2021Jan 30, 2021

The attending physician knelt next to the stretcher to repeat his opening line. “Hello, sir. What brings you to the emergency department today?” The man looked around in a daze, his lips quivering as if he was on the verge…

The attending physician knelt next to the stretcher to repeat his opening line. “Hello, sir. What brings you to the emergency department today?”

The man looked around in a daze, his lips quivering as if he was on the verge of crying. “The demons! The demons, they’re everywhere! Help me. Please, help me. I can’t stand it …”

As the medical scribe, I stood next to the doctor and typed the note. …

Conditions and diseases

How COVID accelerates change: Bridging business principles with emergency medicine

Josh Schwarzbaum, MD, MBA

January 27, 2021Jan 27, 2021

Over the past year, we have experienced massive organizational change at an unprecedented pace. Traditionally, we could spend weeks planning how to best make a change in our workplaces, but COVID-19 was anything but traditional. Our emergency department at Saint Barnabas Health System in Bronx, NY, needed to pivot on a daily and even hourly basis, and to do so took planning and effort. In general, change is difficult, and …

The Podcast by KevinMD

Lessons learned from a combat doctor in Iraq [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

January 24, 2021Jan 24, 2021

"My own dream-induced pain started at the same time this child was mowed down. Then and there is when and where my faith in God died because God, the higher power, had allowed this unspeakable nightmare to happen. My hope…

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“My own dream-induced pain started at the same time this child was mowed down. Then and there is when and where my faith in God died because God, the higher power, had allowed this unspeakable nightmare to happen. My hope for the future evaporated, all while helplessness chewed through my guts From Left to Right.

This was the same moment I realized …

Conditions and diseases

Create a positive light in nursing

Debbie Moore-Black, RN

January 18, 2021Jan 18, 2021

I was an assistant nurse manager (ANM) in a 24 bed ICU in my younger, energetic years. Before that, I was a manager in a very small emergency department. I must say, I loved it. I loved the thrill and the challenge. I was able to work with the Joint Commission; I ordered EKG monitors and defibrillators, any equipment needed for the emergency department. I worked with the health department …

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Create a positive light in nursing

Physician voices

A witness to desperate poverty and ever-present hopelessness

Andy Lamb, MD

January 15, 2021Jan 15, 2021

She shook her head no, eyes brimming with tears, chin quivering with emotion. Again, I told her that without further care, her son would never have use of his arm and possibly would die. Her voice trembling, she told me her husband would beat her if she returned home without the boy. She placed her son on their horse, his newly bandaged arm in a make-shift sling. I gave her …

Physician voices

It’s time to revisit the 4 R’s of the doctor-patient relationship

Gerald P. Corcoran, MD

January 7, 2021Jan 7, 2021

“We have met the enemy in medical education, and he is us!” My paraphrase of the “philosophy of Pogo” is pertinent to today’s crop of graduating medical students. We have inserted them into the most toxic environment for learning medicine,…

“We have met the enemy in medical education, and he is us!”

My paraphrase of the “philosophy of Pogo” is pertinent to today’s crop of graduating medical students. We have inserted them into the most toxic environment for learning medicine, ever.

Dr. Michael Halberstam once stated that the most powerful treatment the ER had to offer (after CPR, of course) was “the sight of your own doctor at the bedside.” Yet look …

Conditions and diseases

Can we do better when delivering bad news in trauma?

Vivek Sant, MD

December 31, 2020Dec 31, 2020

On a recent trauma call, we had a busy night, culminating in a horrific motorcycle trauma that came in early in the morning. The patient had devastating injuries and ended up dying. The detectives finally tracked down the patient’s family. I cleaned myself up, put on my white coat and had the family sit down in a private conference room. I entered with my trauma attending and a consulting specialist, …

Conditions and diseases

The aftermath of death

Jacqueline Pflaum-Carlson, MD

December 29, 2020Dec 29, 2020

Drip. Drip. Drip. It’s 8:00 p.m. I’m staring at the IV tubing. We forgot to stop the fluids. I’m standing in the resuscitation room alongside the naked, broken body of a teenage male. Unable to break my gaze on that…

Drip.

It’s 8:00 p.m.

I’m staring at the IV tubing. We forgot to stop the fluids.

I’m standing in the resuscitation room alongside the naked, broken body of a teenage male. Unable to break my gaze on that dripping IV line, thinking, We’re going to flood him.

But it doesn’t really matter.

Somewhere in the background, muffled yelling comes through the doors.

“Sounds like they found the family,” remarks a nurse.

The tech is putting the young …

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The aftermath of death

Physician voices

A Christmas wish: Thank you for the sacrifices you make and all you do to care for our patients

Andy Lamb, MD

December 23, 2020Dec 23, 2020

Christmas Eve 1990, Saudi Arabia, a few miles south of the Iraqi border - it is cold and dark as I lay on my cot, my sleeping bag around me, the constant hum of the generators in the background. I…

Christmas Eve 1990, Saudi Arabia, a few miles south of the Iraqi border – it is cold and dark as I lay on my cot, my sleeping bag around me, the constant hum of the generators in the background. I am listening to Pachabel’s Canon in D minor on my cassette player. Rain pelts the tent I share with nine other Army doctors. The sides move rhythmically with the wind, …

Physician voices

I could not save this life with every possible medical tool at my disposal

Richard Morand, MD

November 28, 2020Nov 28, 2020

An excerpt from The Healer's Burden: Stories and Poems of Professional Grief. Leaning on the door of Trauma Bay 1, I survey the remains of my latest failure. The story is told in the bloody and jumbled instrument trays, monitors…

An excerpt from The Healer’s Burden: Stories and Poems of Professional Grief.

Leaning on the door of Trauma Bay 1, I survey the remains of my latest failure. The story is told in the bloody and jumbled instrument trays, monitors now silent and dark. In the center of the room sits a gurney covered with a white sheet and an unmistakable human form. Blood radiates

…

Emergency medicine

Articles, page 18

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