Our 20-bed ICU finally captured 10 intensivists — all board-certified in critical care medicine. We were fortunate enough to have one of these doctors in our ICU 24-7. Of course, they all practiced professionally with expertise. But I remembered this o…
Halfway into my four-week hematology consults elective at the county hospital during my fourth year of medical school, I was surprised that one of my patients was a 25-year-old woman from Romania — exactly my age. This was highly unusual, as most of th…
If you went to go to a museum in New York City and saw a live heart encased in glass, still pumping and pulsating — it would be my heart, shredded into a thousand pieces all in disarray. But it still would be pulsating. This describes my life as a nurs…
She was a middle-aged female who was life-flighted from an outlying facility to the tertiary care hospital in which I worked. As she quickly rolled out of the elevator, I ran toward her and saw her blood pressure was tanking with her mentation fluctuat…
Medicine was my path. I’d decided that early in life before I knew what a career in medicine really looked like. I believed as a doctor I could help people and have a positive impact in their lives. After all, what does a teenager know about being a do…
These events happened over 18 years ago. Some content has been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Searching for positive changes in the health care industry. We are not a number, and the patients are not a number. I’m not good at lying. My…
I became a nurse at the age of 23. I was pregnant with my first son and dove into nursing headfirst, accepting a job in the pediatric ICU of the hospital where I worked. I still remember the call when I received the job offer. I hung up and jumped up a…
Matt was 40, my sister’s age. He was training for a marathon and trying to talk his many friends into joining. He lay in bed with his three-year-old son every night to help him fall asleep. It’s hard to sleep train a toddler with a newborn to nurture a…
Florence Nightingale was among the first nurses who started wearing a nurse’s cap. The cap was derived by nuns and represented those caring for the sick. Hair was neatly tightened into a bun and covered by the cap. Back then becoming a nurse was typica…
Part 4 of a series. By the time my father’s metastatic prostate cancer was diagnosed, he was already experiencing symptoms of poor appetite and weight loss, which grew progressively worse following his first hospital admission. As his nutritional statu…
