As a new mother, working in an emergency department made me want to go home and childproof every nook and cranny of our house. On a daily basis at work I care for children, most often toddlers, injured at home in various ways. I learned of all the potential household dangers and how to keep my children safe.
I remember vividly caring for the 2-year-old girl who burnt her entire hand …
One thing I learned early on as a doctor is different people have different tolerances for pain. At one end of the spectrum, for example, I recall a woman who came to the emergency department with a small splinter in her foot. She arrived wailing in pain, and we had to take her back to a treatment room ahead of other patients because her howling was scaring the people in …
Dear attending, I’m a third-year medical student fresh out of the classroom. I’ve studied from books for years, and now I finally get to see what it is like to be a doctor. It’s exciting but also a daunting experience. I look to you as a guide: what you wear, how you speak, what tools you use, and how you treat others. This is the year I will be socialized …
“There’s such an issue of privacy in health care, and yet they let all the patients walk around with their derrières sticking out.”
This quote within an article by the National Post got me thinking about HIPAA.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a big flat hammer with excellent intentions. Like EMTALA, however, it too has its side effects. Along with many other ER docs …
My family was driving to see our new niece this past Saturday. While passing through a town on the way, we came upon a motorcycle accident. The rider had been hit by a vehicle and was lying on the pavement with a growing crowd of people who wanted to help. I’ve done it before. I did CPR at the scene of a wreck when I was in medical school, and …
Did it ever occur to some of today’s physicians that many people work awfully hard and complain a lot less than they do about “burnout” and “work-life balance”?
Did it ever occur to them that “work-life balance” is the very definition of a first-world problem, unique to a very privileged class of highly educated people, most of whom are white?
Every day, I go to work and see the example of the …
The trauma doors flew open, and a middle age man was rushed into the room. All we knew in those moments was that a seemingly lifeless body lay in front of us. There was no pulse and chest compressions were started. After several minutes of no response, another physician hurried out of the room and returned with an ultrasound. Within seconds of placing the probe on the man’s chest, the …
There are two key scenarios when doctors fail to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.”
Sometimes doctors give a diagnosis we’re not 100 percent sure of and other times we don’t diagnose something we’re almost 100 percent sure of. The truth is complicated and often more gray than black and white.
I have been an emergency physician for 12 years. I have had the opportunity to learn from and try to emulate an impressive number of amazing clinical physicians. These doctors seemed god-like at first, but as my training and career progressed, I realized that they were mostly teaching me through their own experiences.
One of my favorite teachers had a humbling saying: “Good …
I have worked in a lot of hospitals over the past two years. Quite a few of the facilities have been critical access hospitals, which is to say that they are very small, typically having fewer than 25 inpatient beds, and are usually somewhere in the boonies. A number of characteristics allow a hospital to qualify as critical access and receive additional …
1. Wait times in most emergency departments are ridiculous. But, if you have a real emergency, you won’t have to wait. If you have abnormal vital signs, a worrisome ECG, or concerning chief complaint, you will be seen long before the person who checked in with a sore throat to get a work excuse.
Patients with chief complaints like “GSW abdomen” and “found down/unresponsive” don’t wait to …
Natalie Fuelner created a well-written article in the Bangor Daily News describing some of the tribulations many new parents go through with young children. One weekend, her toddler fell face first onto a metal patio table. Immediately, the toddler’s face is full of blood. The dad panicked. Natalie was a “trembling mess” on the inside.
Their physician neighbor wasn’t available to look at the child. …
Flying on a return trip from Chicago to San Francisco, I can’t help but feel a little on edge. It’s not the fear of flying that is leaving me a little less relaxed than the pleasant, middle-aged woman peacefully slumbering in the seat next to me. It’s the possibility of hearing the announcement few doctors are comfortable hearing during travel: “Is …
Summer is immortalized in popular culture for good reasons — no other season can match it for the variety of fun and exciting activities it brings. Unfortunately, that variety of activities and the large volume of …
We spend our days like desperate junkies crawling the carpet, sifting through the shaggy strands of patient histories with shaky fingers in search of facts. Every word our patients utter we feed to the never-ending demands of the electronic chart.
We find a fact and we enter it. The database grows. Someone somewhere adds another question we are supposed to …
There can be little doubt that these days that political correctness has run rampant. Terms like “racist,” “sexist,” or “homophobic” are thrown around so frequently and early now that one has to wonder what is actually being accomplished. If you were to ask a physician what PC label they most fear, it would be “disruptive.”
You could hear a pin drop. The awkward silence at a dinner table after my pager went off. Eyes locked on me. For a split second, the laughter ceased, forks held in mid-air, chewed food, half-swallowed.
The nervous system of every doctor adapts to the sound of his or her pager during residency. Early in training, widening pupils and hair-raising palpitations fade …
Do you remember Mad Libs from when you were a child? A story is filled with blanks, and as you fill them in with inappropriate and ridiculous words, you laugh until you can’t see straight. You laugh until you can’t breathe, and your parents beg you to stop! Let’s be children again. Share these with the nurses, and give the shift a little levity.
Pain medication. You see, doctor, my pain specialist …
I came across an article featured on NPR and it immediately grabbed my attention. Traditionally medical student education is accomplished in a four-year program in medical schools nationwide but University of California, Davis is now offering their medical training as a three-year obligation. A three-year medical school as opposed to a four-year program is intriguing, thought provoking and …
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 …
