Tag: Emergency Department
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Compassion in the emergency room
Raymond BellisStony Brook, New York, United States Yet another shift in the Emergency Department—between the frenzied rush of staff, the constant pinging of monitors, and the chaotic overhead announcements, I didn’t find the environment particularly conducive to healing. But as a dedicated student in my third year of medical school, I eagerly picked up a…
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Furniture of bones
D. Brendan JohnsonMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States “Would you like the new patient?” My senior resident offered me the next admission, a patient being stabilized in the emergency department after a suicide attempt. As a fresh medical student in the beginning of my clinical education, I quickly said yes, plucked up my courage, and went to…
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The Lazarus phenomenon: When the dead return to life
Tom SeweNairobi, Kenya It is a few minutes after 2 AM. A middle-aged woman lays motionless on a table in a hospital emergency department with tubes protruding from multiple orifices. The relentless cardiac monitor screams its flat-line signal as the code-blue team pants, scrubs clinging to their sweaty chests after a phenomenal forty-five-minute cardiopulmonary resuscitation…
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Medicine, musically
Willem BloisHalifax, Nova Scotia I sat on the piano bench, head down, staring at the space between middle C and the key above it. I could see my teacher out of the corner of my eye, sitting forward in her chair, no longer relaxed nor casually listening to the first movement of a Haydn piano…
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How to save a life
Sam CampbellMoh’D IbrahimJohnson City, Tennessee, United States My wife is in Texas, threatening to file divorce papers. I am here, 996 miles away, trying to find Mrs. Smith who has wandered out of her room searching the entire hospital for her dead husband. When I find her on the fourth floor, she asks if I…
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The language game of medicine
Gunjan SharmaDevon, United Kingdom “The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it.”– Ludwig Wittgenstein1 The language game Language is a fascinating concept when viewed through a philosophical lens. Imagine if we no longer had a word for jealousy. Would that mean such a thing could no longer exist? Jealousy…
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In the OR
Kelly KleinMichigan, United States I work at a large teaching hospital as an Emergency Department social worker. It is easy to get lost in a place that large, so I am accustomed to helping people get to various areas of the hospital. But on this day, I was not prepared for the charge nurse’s request…