The irony of me observing death on a day celebrating my birth

As part of my medical school’s inter-professional learning, I shadowed a hospital chaplain this afternoon. While physicians principally attend to the physical healing of patients, chaplains also fulfill an important role in health care: meeting the spiritual needs of patients. When faced with disease, patients often grapple with deeper questions about their illness beyond just what the diagnosis and treatment plans are. Immediately upon arriving at the hospital, there was a code blue. A patient had arrived to the emergency room a few days prior with a pulmonary condition. And now she was in cardiac arrest. From my first semester of medical school, I could gather that due to the weakness in her lungs, she wasn’t getting enough oxygen and as such, her heart, a muscle which requires a large sum of oxygen to function, had ceased to continue working. As I entered the emergency room, the medical team was busy at work performing CPR. They furiously pumped the patient’s chest, ran the defibrillator, and repeated the process. The team diligently did this over and over again, but the patient’s vitals showed no change. There was no heart rate. 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: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Education Emergency Medicine Hospital-Based Medicine Source Type: blogs