Archive for February, 2007
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Can’t Stop Poking it With a Stick
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So an anonymous poster commented that my colleague and I were lacking in compassion after reading the prior post. Hmm. I have a few questions for everyone, and particularly for anonymous.
First, at your current job, do you ever speak with your fellow workers about how much it sucks or about old man Smith’s dentures […]
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Random Numbers
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Number of patients I have see in the ED: Approx. 43,000.
Number I will see before retirement: 120,000
Amount of my soul I expect to have left after this: 14.8%
Percentage of real emergencies: 5-7%
Percentage of urgent patients: 20%
Time it takes reflected light to reach the Earth from the Moon: 1.3 seconds.
Percent of patients in ED at 3:00 […]
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Okay, That’s It!
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Here’s a list of stressful jobs that most of us can agree on (in no particular order)…
1. Stock or bond trader2. Bearing Sea crabber3. College or Pro coach or athlete4. US Navy SEAL5. British SAS6. Green Beret/Special Forces operator7. Emergency Physician/Trauma Surgeon/Pick any other specialty here8. Fighter pilot/ Helicopter pilot in Iraq9. Official food taster […]
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"Little Miss Sunshine"
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Warning. Off the subject of medicine.
Saw “Little Miss Sunshine” on DVD the other day. Way hyped movie. Big hit at Sundance. I gotta say that I thought it was terrible. I mean we spend most of the movie getting close to a dysfunctional family who are all doing their best to make their 8 year […]
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… and Again, and Again.
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Got called up to the CCU the other night to run a code. The patient sure looked dead when I got there, blue, mottled, CPR in progress, PEA on the monitor, and we had an arterial line in so we knew the pressure was zero.
Went through the usually worthless PEA/Asystole protocol and brought in the […]
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Dead Again
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One of the least favorite parts of the ED job is working a code, having someone die unexpectedly, and then having to tell the family. Imagine having to do it twice on the same patient.
Had one brought in the other day with the wrong ID and told a family their husband and father was dead, […]
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The People Who Don’t Care About the First Story but Avidly Read the Second are My Patients.
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FIRST STORY: (heard about it but had to google to find it).
Three killed when Benefis Mercy Flight goes downBy PAULA WILMOT Tribune Staff WriterGrief spread across Great Falls and Montana Wednesday after Tuesday night’s crash of a twin-engine Mercy Flight airplane that killed the pilot and a two-person medical team from Benefis Healthcare. Vince Kirol, […]
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Fountain of Pus
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Some docs just dig pus. I am one of them. Tonight though, I nearly vomited while doing an I & D (incision and drainage) of a pilonidal cyst. Click the above title to learn about pilonidal cysts.
So a gentleman comes into the ED complaining of terrible pain over his “tailbone”, worsening for a few days, […]
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The Joust: A Semi-Controlled Rant
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I know I am merely a simple car-crash physician. I know I don’t have the mental capacity to do something really tough like, say, radiology, but occasionally even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
Emergency Medicine is still a relatively young specialty. In smaller towns that aren’t affiliated with a large multi-specialty hospital the ED is […]
