September 20, 2007

  • Not Quite an Emergency

    Well my month long rotation in emergency medicine is finally over and I have learned quite a few things in that time
    View the Original short film
    Going into medical school, as well as this rotation, Emergency Medicine was always high on my list of possible future careers. It has fixed shifts, plenty of time off, a huge variety of patients, a plethora of procedures, and not a lot of patient follow up, all things which appealed to me…

    …or so I thought.
    waiting room through glass
    Turns out that the fixed shifts, while only 8 hours, leave me more tired than the 16 hour shifts I pulled in medicine. And they have no regularity until you get to attending level, so I am never off at the same time as my friends. And that huge variety of patients? turns out that just like most other fields of medicine most of what you end up seeing is chest pain, abdominal injury, and alcoholism.
    confiscated
    This is not to say I didnt enjoy myself. As i am sure you could tell from my stories, I had a grand old time. At the same time, I could feel the field was simply not quite for me. Much to my surprise, I actually WANT more patient follow up than ER provides. I like to know what is going to happen to my patient beyond stabilizing them from a car accident, or a gunshot wound, or the sniffles
    GSW right chest and abdomen
    GSW to leg and scrotum
    And while there are a lot of procedures performed, most of them are done not by doctor, who are often to busy, but by nurses or techs or the surgeons. And of course the med students
    difficult airway
    work curve
    The late hours of the night shifts make everyone tired and a little goofy
    George
    Kimono!
    slightly inappropriate fun
    And while there are some terrible moments…
    blood smear
    untitled
    There are also some beautiful ones
    happy customer 2
    There is also a LOT of waiting. The thing about emergency medicine, is that there is either too much going on at once, or not enough. There is no middle ground
    previous
    | next

    Awaiting the Trauma
    Of course at the end of a long night, it feels good to walk through those doors and feel you have accomplished something
    to the cutting place
    Because on that drive home, after seeing all the things that can happen to people, and how little can often be done, it feels like the colors start to run while you are still catching up.
    After a long night shift II
    But after all, life is never just in black in white.

    -J

    Note: All the above photos are actually of the hospital that I worked in for ED, though they were not taken at the time I worked there. Instead, one of the former attendings took these photos when he still taught at Mount Sinai and many of those you see in the photos still are employed there. I happened to be fortunate enough to stumble across his gallery, so i shared a few of my favorites. Check the rest of the gallery out here. It does a fantastic job of capturing the brief series of moments that make up life in the ED, and I strongly encourage you all to check it out.

Comments (2)

  • josh. great pics. loved all your stories (even though i HATE HATE hospitals).

    what’s next in your rotation?

    will you have more free time for greek dinner parties again?

    ps- there’s a greek festival going on in my hometown right now and it so made me think of you!

  • For some reason the pictures don’t download, maybe it’s my browser.  I will check out the gallery then. No, life is not black and white. For all the miserable moments there are beautiful ones and then there are those gray moments I’m not exactly sure what to call. From reading your post, I get the feeling one can pretty much see life in all its pain and glory there in the ER. Your sense of humor along with the palette of colors you used to paint your stories made it possible for me to read about a field of work that is very unlike mine, but then again, I also found similarities. So now that you know that Emergency Medicine is not what you want…what happens?

Post a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *