How to be EPIC

LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog Let it never be said that we resist change. We, the consultants in my ED, have been reinvented. Previously our title was Duty Officer, which had a pleasantly communist, scratchy grey-overalled sound to it, but now we are the EPIC. An imperious title, in my opinion. This stands for Emergency Physician In Charge. Here’s where the duplicity begins. I’m hardly in charge of my own brain, so feigning tight command of the beast of the Emergency Department is a bit of a stretch. But still, I turn up for shifts. At least I dress appropriately. I wear scrubs which make me look like a scrawny Police Officer but without the fun stuff hanging from my belt. I carry THE phone. Yes, the one that has the broken ice-cream truck ring tone that peals out horribly during the depths of sombre conversations; the phone that conveys endless information bytes about patients who may, or may not, pass through our doors, or otherwise random requests or facts upon which I am allegedly supposed to act. With this, though, I am firmly in charge. I don’t answer it. That’s the limit of my in-chargeness, I think. The days vary, like all good days in the vortex of Mount Doom. Let’s take one. I start it by thinking about coffee, which is then rudely interrupted by waves of patient chaos. Busloads of them and their shaky pathology. By nine I am wonderi...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Literary Medicine EPIC Source Type: blogs