Peer Reviewer Emeritus
Cooper University Hospital
I'm an Emergency Medicine Intern at Cooper University Hospital, having graduated with my MD and Masters in Urban Bioethics from Temple University School of Medicine in 2015. Medical school helped me realize that the only way for me to stay sane after seeing and doing what we do is to express it- and this is how I express the madness that is my life, and my life in medicine.
The message, like all earth-shattering pronouncements, came with the softest of dings. As I was walking out from my house into the cold December air for a morning shift in the emergency department, my parents messaged me about the passing of my grandfather.
Double-booking. Concurrent surgery. Procedural overlap. However it is named, the once clandestine practice is now under public scrutiny.
A specialty known for its brevity, emergency medicine can be appropriately summed up in haiku form. This is a collection of haikus about life in the emergency department.
I didn’t know what it was, but it hurt — a subtle, gnawing soreness that I wouldn’t think about, but was never quite off my mind. Medical school had just started. I was beginning a new chapter in my life, and everything was good — everything except that unusual pain in my back.
While there is always an intrinsic desire to root for patient recovery and ultimate survival, I struggled immensely with the decision to pursue invasive measures. This is a poem that helped depict my feelings for this patient encounter.
It really doesn’t take much to remind you just how human you are. I utilize the adjective “human” because most believe, both inside and outside of the confines of the medical community, that physicians are entitled and even expected to behave in somewhat robotic ways, with the long hours and constant absorption and dispensation of medical knowledge that often comes with performing the job and doing so well.
Realizing that we have both inpatient and outpatient months, which require different skill sets, I feel that it would be better to split these lists into both outpatient and inpatient suggestions. After a few month of being on outpatient rotations, here is my list of eight things to master in order to break the successful intern barrier in the outpatient world.
Twenty minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Fifteen beats per minute. Seven nurses. Five doctors. Three paramedics. Two anesthesiologists. One transcriber and me. And then the eerie silence of the trauma room as the death was called.
“Hey hey! How are you?” someone calls out as I walk into the fluorescently lit emergency department I call home. “Living the dream,” is my habitual answer, and it’s only half facetious.
Everyone warns you that intern year is hard. It’s a year of little sleep, a rollercoaster of emotions both good and bad. Frustration and guilt in wanting to know everything now because everything you don’t know might be what matters for this patient, this time. And tremendous successes. Some of the things I did this year, I really can’t believe I was able to do. And survive.
Sometimes, it’s difficult to recall that single defining moment or person that sends you on the path you’re meant to take in life. I was fortunate in that I found that experience halfway through my undergraduate career at the University of California, Davis. I had recently lost my grandmother — although I’d wanted to help, all I’d been able to do at the hospital was translate for her. That overwhelming sense of helplessness I felt due to my lack of medical knowledge fueled my desire to help and serve others as a physician.
A surgical resident writes: “Several recent studies suggest current general surgery residents are poorly trained and unprepared for independent practice at the completion of residency. In general, do you agree that current general surgery residents are poorly trained and unable to operate independently at the completion of residency?”
Attending Physician Guest Writer
Private Practice
Skeptical Scalpel is a retired surgeon and was a surgical department chairman and residency program director for many years. He is board-certified in general surgery and critical care and has re-certified in both several times. He blogs at SkepticalScalpel.blogspot.com and tweets as @SkepticScalpel.
