The case
A thirty-five-year-old female presents to the emergency department on a weekend afternoon with the following chief complaint: “I want to give up custody of my son.”
The patient is well dressed — and so is her four-year-old son, who is sitting comfortably on the bed playing a video game on his mother’s cell phone.
According to the patient, she is a single mother with no support system. Her son’s father deserted …
Recently, I was on call for surgery at a hospital in New York City. At 2 a.m. in the morning, we were paged to a trauma in the ED. After we stabilized the patient and moved him for CT scans and x-rays, I noticed a small stretcher tucked away in the back part of the ED, a place typically reserved for overflow patients when we run out of rooms.
The patient …
I have long been a fan of the Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital, which is published weekly in the New England Journal of Medicine. For many years, I made a point of recommending them to medical students and internal medicine residents as a model of concise yet comprehensive case presentations.
No wasted words, no missing information, and none of the filler that trainees often added when they presented cases, such …
I would like to explain why Michael Kirsch’s article, “Why the ER admits too many patients,” is wrong, in all the myriad ways, in his contention that emergency physicians (EPs) admit too many patients because of improper motivations. Note that I am not going to argue that EPs don’t admit too many patients — that’s a legitimate discussion to have and there may be some merit …
Every player in the medical arena has found itself challenged by conflicts where one’s self-interest competes can skew what should be pure advice. This issue is not restricted to the medical universe. Every one of us has to navigate through similar circumstances throughout the journey of life. If an attorney, for example, is paid by the hour, then there is an incentive for the legal task to take longer than …
Today, a patient attacked me. A nurse got kicked. Another punched. I was gouged to the point that blood was drawn. The patient was neither intoxicated nor psychotic. Rather, she was a meek 92-year-old grandmother, and she was terrified. It took five of us to hold her down, as she summoned the strength of a woman fighting for her life.
Linda is an elderly woman with moderate dementia. She is blind …
It was recently Nurses Week in early May and there were a lot of adulations being offered on social media and throughout hospitals regarding the appreciation we have for those among us who have chosen to be on the “front lines” of caring for us when ill or injured.
As an emergency physician I could speak about the many times a nurse has grabbed me and pulled me into a room …
One of my most treasured stories as an ED physician belongs to a lovely couple who valued quality of life. It was a routine day in the ED when an elderly woman rolled through the ambulance doors on a cold, narrow stretcher, unaccompanied by family. She was placed in bed 5, which is where we met. She was frail and her memory was poor. The EMS run sheet reported “change …
Medical scribes are a burgeoning field with many institutions and practices exploring their use while the many commercial enterprises who lease out scribes are pushing for their widespread acceptance. There is no accepted definition of what scribes do or what their background or training should be. There is no mechanism for licensure of them in any state. They are poorly defined medical assistants. The field is in its infancy and …
A small case with big implications almost escaped my notice recently The Boston Globe reported a case in which a family sued after a 23-year-old man died after being diagnosed with a lung infection.
According to the Globe, the young man went to one of the Boston emergency rooms complaining of cough, fever, and chest pains. OK, stop right there all …
As a medical scribe working with a large, well-known scribe company, unnamed to protect my job, it makes me proud reading all the articles published about how much having a scribe benefits a physician, especially in the emergency department. I enjoy my job immensely and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and engage in patient care. However, as a …
There are few professional careers centered around protecting and caring for others that garner so much verbal and physical abuse than a career in emergency medicine. Mental health workers, police, fire, and EMS personnel are the other fields that come to mind when I think of a service that “helps” people yet gets abuse dished upon them on nearly a daily basis.
A 2006 survey of emergency nurses showed that 25% …
I came across a really good post on the Daily Beast written by a pediatrician in New England, griping (appropriately) about parents who were unwilling to trust his judgment about vaccinating their children.
Why have so many patients lost trust in their doctors?
You might challenge the assumption that patients used to trust their doctors more, and that would be a fair question. I haven’t …
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During my internal medicine rotation, the medical students had the opportunity to attend intern morning report, an interactive teaching session where attending physicians walk the interns through a patient’s story, starting from the moment they hit the door of the emergency room to the final stages of diagnosis and treatment.
After discussing the patient’s symptoms, complaints and past medical history, the attendings always ask the group to think carefully about the …
I have noticed over the years that physicians who write about medicine, particularly for the general public, are limited to very specific discussions. For instance, it is perfectly acceptable to write about the plight of the poor and uninsured. It is always reasonable to advocate for a single payer system. It is perfectly acceptable to discuss how one downsized in order to make less and “give back” more. And it …
I click open the x-ray viewer. After 4 years in emergency pediatrics, I am not really surprised that a tibia fracture underlies the bruised ankle I unexpectedly encountered on physical exam. Yet I audibly gasp as the chest x-ray loads. The torso in question belongs to a chubby little cherub of a 3-month-old in room 11, brought in for red eyes. I begin to count the fractured ribs — 1, …
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If you had to pick a single metric to a measure a hospital, which would you choose?
Of course, you can’t boil everything about a hospital down to one, single data point. Defining quality, throughput, and other factors used to evaluate a hospital is difficult business. The Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) tracks dozens of core metrics related to both quality and process, both inpatients and outpatients. As a practicing …
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 …
Recently, an ancient sculptural masterpiece has been on temporary display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Greek and Roman halls. On loan from Rome’s Museo Nazionale Romano, “Boxer at Rest” depicts a battered pugilist immediately after a fight. His face bears evidence of broken nasal bones, swelling and hematoma under his right eye, and multiple lacerations and abrasions to his nose, cheeks, and forehead. One secret …
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In March of last year I began and quickly ended a cycling career. In my first race of the weekend I placed second, and in a moment of hubris felt emboldened to reach for more.
In the second race, the very next day, I signed up for a higher category. The race was tougher, and I got stuck behind the pack, which slowed immensely around turns. In an effort to advance, …
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