Labor and Delivery

The obstetrics nurses rushed the stretcher through the triage station as the resident tore out of her chair and followed them. I jumped up and ran with her. It was the second night of my obstetrics rotation and there was no time for triaging this patient, who was on the verge of giving birth. And because she spoke almost no English we...

When the Patient Becomes a Specimen

He lay in the hospital bed, belly-up, staring at the ceiling. We knocked as we entered and asked the patient a barrage of questions. How was he feeling? What doctors had he seen in the past? What other medical conditions did he have? When did he first start to notice uncontrolled nosebleeds? What other symptoms did he notice? An endless...

The Costly Complications of Emergency Medical Care

During one Emergency Department (ED) shift, EMTs brought in an older woman to the hospital. She had called emergency medical services (EMS) and explained that she had low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia can lead to coma, brain damage, and death as well as other more minor symptoms such as tremors and sweats. But when the EMTs...

Imagine

Imagine, for a moment, that your kidneys have failed. Perhaps you had longstanding, uncontrolled diabetes. Or, you might have had persistently high blood pressure (hypertension). You could not afford your medications, you refused to take them, or you never even visited your doctor and thus never knew you were sick. Whatever the...

A Day in the Life, Part 2

This post continues my description in the last one of a day in the life of a medical student on rotation, where I’ve left off at lunchtime of an inpatient service day. During the afternoon, the work of executing plans continues. If the team discharges a patient, that patient needs a follow-up appointment in clinic to make sure...

A Day in the Life, Part 1

My editors here at The New Atlantis suggested I write about what a day is like for me and other members of the medical team. What exactly (aside from rounding) do we do all day? When do we have to be in? When do we leave? What goes on when we’re not rounding? We can divide the third year of medical school into three distinct...

Physicians in Wartime

“Here is a hand-to-hand struggle in all its horror and frightfulness,” wrote Henri Dunant, a nineteenth-century international activist, in his book A Memory of Solferino. The book concerns the Battle of Solferino in June of 1859 between the Austrians and the French. Dunant describes the combatants “trampling each other under foot,...

PCP Overdose in the Emergency Department

There was a crowd of security guards, physicians, and nurses in an ED room. The patient inside squirmed and writhed on the stretcher while sweating profusely, soaking his clothing and the hospital bed. Though slender and slightly cachectic, the patient had fought off the security entourage multiple times, like a snake slipping from their...

Opioid Overdose in the Emergency Department

Image via Shutterstock I had just finished introducing myself to the resident when the EMTs wheeled in a patient on a stretcher. The patient’s face was completely pale and expressionless and his eyes were closed; his hair looked disheveled and unwashed. He wore tattered jeans, a soiled white t-shirt with holes, and white sneakers with...

Running a Trauma Code in the ED

Hospital image via Shutterstock The paramedics flying the patient in by helicopter called the Emergency Department charge nurse and described the patient: a 40-year-old male in a construction accident with deep lacerations (wounds) to the left leg. The moment between the paramedics’ call and arrival was only a few minutes. During this...