Tag: emergency-department
Leadership in the ED: Being a Floor General for Your Team
In sports, the most successful athletes are not necessarily those that have had the best individual statistics, but are those that have managed to make their teammates better around them: Magic Johnson, Isaiah Thomas, or to use a hot new name – Jeremy Lin. These athletes epitomize selfless leadership on the court. While their own […]
Read ArticleAmerica’s Healthcare System Needs a Social Contract
As a citizen it’s easy to clamor for rights. It’s much harder to live up to our responsibilities. And so it is in health care. As citizens we have implicitly agreed to abide by a social contract, which means a person’s moral and political obligations are dependent on an agreement among them to form the […]
Read ArticleSometimes the Best Emergency Medicine is No Medicine at All
I was recently reminded by a patient experience that the best medicine sometimes is no medicine at all. I cared for a young woman who had been seen the last few nights complaining of shortness of breath. When it was obvious that she had normal breath sounds, no wheezing and normal oxygen level I started […]
Read ArticleLeading from the Front in a New Emergency Department
I recently spent a week working clinically at our new hospital partner, Bristol Hospital, in Connecticut. I worked along many other experienced, seasoned physicians and leaders. In fact, nearly all of our group’s top leadership and senior partners have worked clinical shifts in the Emergency Department there in recent weeks. And “leading from the front,” so to […]
Read ArticleAfter 20 Years in Emergency Medicine, The Worries and Tools I Take to a New ER
When I completed my training nearly 20 years ago, I always wondered what type of emergency department I would work in. Two decades later I can say I’ve worked in a lot of different emergency departments, seven of them to be specific. They range from bustling suburban hospitals to small rural facilities to busy trauma […]
Read ArticleIt’s Mandatory Flu Shot Season Again!
It’s flu season again, which means it’s flu shot season again. As it has last year, Shady Grove Adventist Hospital mandated that all employees get vaccinated, and while most people are compliant, the policy generates a lot of talk. The usual stuff: “I don’t think it really works,” and “I always get sicker from the […]
Read ArticleDeath at UMass Memorial: Is the Problem “Alarm Fatigue,” or Something Bigger?
Last week, the Boston Globe reported on the second death in four years at UMass Memorial Medical Center related to “alarm fatigue.” Anyone who works in a hospital, particularly an area like an emergency department where critical patients are seen, can understand how a tragedy like this happens. Monitor alarms go off all the time. The […]
Read ArticleEmergency Medicine – Where Do We Go From Here?
We cost too much. We take care of URIs and ankle sprains. We don’t coordinate care well. We use too many resources. We’ve all heard it in the media, even our President taking passing shots at the usefulness and cost effectiveness of emergency care. Of course the reality is federal law requires us to see […]
Read ArticleReducing Medical Errors Through Improved Communication
The most important take away point from this WSJ article “Hospitals Overhaul ER’s to Reduce Mistakes” is communication. The article states that most errors in judgment involve missing pieces of critical data or information that one team member may be aware of and assume that others know. In an ideal world, the best model for […]
Read ArticleIt’s the Simple Things that Make All the Difference
Humility is one of the great virtues of an ER doc. As many of us know we work in a fishbowl and there is no shortage of armchair quarterbacks ready to point out all we did wrong in caring for a patient. That never bothered me very much as I take comfort in the fact […]
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