Archive for March, 2006
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Moment of Inattention
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Just a few minutes. Just a call from a telemarketer. Just 5 minutes away. Just long enough for a 1 year old to die. This is truly the worst part of what I do. What can you say to the mother? What kind of fears does this dig up for me with kids at home […]
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Doctors Vote With Their $$ in England
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Click the title above for an intersting tidbit. Seems our British colleagues in medicine are overwhelimingly choosing to obtain their own health insurance and not rely on the government’s system to care for them as they age. Me too. (from the times online- Britain)
Dr Sarah Burnett, a consultant radiologist in London who worked in the […]
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Press-Gainey
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Please click on the ”Press-Gainey” header for an amusing take on this problem (link broken…sorry). S-cat points out that the sample size of these surveys is so small that a couple of bad comments can completely skew your numbers. The ‘’suits” as our friend in the link calls them, are chasing shadows and making work […]
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Can’t get no…..
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Just a quick note about complaints and patient satisfaction. Our director was concerned that our scores had dropped over the past couple of months. Well, it turns out that the same scumbag drug seeker that frequents the ED and had threatened one of the docs had recieved not one but TWO of the […]
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Can’t Win for Losing
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I have written previously about patients using the ED for their primary care, usually ”because it’s free”. Here’s one better. I took care of a patient yesterday that I remembered from three weeks previously when I had evaluated him for shoulder pain. This young, otherwise healthy gentleman does a job which involves repetetive motion. He […]
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Medications
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DOCS ON THE WEB Speaking of meds, I would ask you all to join me in getting McNeil pharma (Tylenol) and all the makers of ibuprofen to remove their products from the market. It is obvious to me after 10 years and approx 40,000 patients, that “that shit don’t work”. I have failed to work […]
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EMTALA
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So the government has written a law to prevent patient dumping. EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. This prohibits facilities from transferring patients with an emergency condition that could be cared for at the facility to which the patient presents. Of course it is not that simple. It is hugely complicated and […]
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Drug Seekers
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What to do when someone fakes symptoms to get narcotics? Depending on my mood and how busy we are you might get lucky with me. Sometimes I don’t care if you have come in every other day for a year for a demerol shot if it will just clear the bed to get someone who […]
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$ and Medical School
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Here’s a little bit of hard truth for those aspiring medical students out there. You will pay about $10,000 a year to attend a state supported medical school. You will pay up to $40,000 a year to attend a private medical school. These figures are conservative.
After medical school you might choose to become a general […]
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Darwin Award Candidate
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One night when I was in residency we got a trauma patient into the main trauma bay. The paramedics called him in as an “auto-ped”, automobile versus pedestrian accident. We see these all the time but this one was different.
He’s drunk and complaining about being strapped on the back board. When I say drunk I […]
