The physician’s ultimate calling faces pressure

In the fall of 1980, in my final year of medical school, I sat in the main ward of Saint Vincent’s Hospital, Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Filling the vast space were twenty-four beds, in four rows, with twenty-four patients. The prow of the open nursing station thrust from one wall into the center. A high ceiling vanished above. Yellow light filtered through ancient rippled glass windows and distant fluorescent bulbs made skin colors strange. To sit at the station was to survey the sight, sound, and smell of human suffering. Cancer, heart failure, mysterious infection, stroke, and just plain old, displayed in a zoo of disease. If you understood this room, you understood medicine. I was shaking. My senior resident had just berated me for deserting Mr. Cooper, a 67-year-old bus driver with advanced cancer and pneumonia. There was a shortage of a critical antibiotic; it looked like we would run out. Therefore, I had stopped Mr. Cooper’s medicine “too soon.” I was concerned that if we ran out, then we would have nothing to treat the next “Mr. Cooper” who crawled into that ghastly room. The resident had not concealed his contempt. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs