Trauma Room Two

By PHILIP ALLEN GREEN, MD Sometimes when I am bored, when it is all sore throats and dental pains, when I feel more like I am a social worker and a hand-holder than an emergency medicine physician, I play a game. I do not look at the chart before I go into a room. I walk in cold. I enter with no idea who is going to be in there or why. In that very first second, before anyone speaks, I try to guess what the story is, who the people in the room are, and why they are in my emergency room. Here-maybe it would make more sense if I showed you. I draw back the curtain and step into Trauma Room Two. My eyes scan quickly about, gathering as much information as they can. There are three people in the room. For a brief second, I intentionally do not look at the patient lying on the hospital bed, not yet. Two people accompany the patient, a man and a woman. The man sits on a hard plastic chair pushed back against the room’s wall, staring quietly ahead. I start with him. I know if I can just look closely enough, the story is there.   I study him. He is in his late forties. He wears a jet-black business suit. The fine fabric lies starkly against a bright, white, collared dress shirt. The dress shirt is pressed and starched and clean. He shifts slightly in the chair, and the red silk tie around his neck catches the light just so, drawing my eye to it. Small square gold icons fill the tie in an exact and set pattern. The knot at the top is tied with perfect precision and symmetry. T...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs