“I can imagine the horror of watching a colleague being attacked. I worry about the coworker who Lynne protected that day, since being a survivor can be so bittersweet. I can feel the shock of how quickly the violence escalated, tasting the bitte…
Category: Hospital-Based Medicine
Unyielding physicians. My congregation. Hold me up.
While I lack certainty in my faith, a church has always been a sanctuary. And while I land in church rarely, and even less in this pandemic, when I’m in one, in any country across the globe, a certain feeling comes to me. My favorites are old, gothic,…
“Call the family. Let them know she passed away.”
She was an ICU downgrade. Hospice care is what they told me. We added her name to our list, and my senior resident told me she was now my patient. I did not have a clear story. Sepsis? Complications? The ICU note was lengthy. Rounds were coming up, and…
Is COVID a turning point for sustainability in hospital supply chains? [PODCAST]
“Scarcity has, in many ways, defined the COVID-19 experience in the U.S., from shortages in personal protective equipment to ICU ventilators and hospital capacity, to COVID test kits, to drugs like Remdesivir in hard-hit states. These shortages h…
Trapped in a cauldron of suffering, medical staff are weary
Sometimes I really look forward to something new. An alien race arriving on earth would be a nice start. I think we could all use a change in the news cycle. Because I am very tired of thinking about, talking about, and especially treating COVID-19. In…
I’m grateful for your trust in me. I wish it didn’t require a cancer diagnosis to win it.
You are my favorite patient. You’re charming and funny. You proudly tell me you’ve just retired – having built multiple successful businesses from scratch. You were admitted to my service with rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Your C…
3 ways health care leadership can get nurses back at the bedside
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to push everyone, especially frontline health care workers, well beyond the brink. Nurses have been exposed to the most trying and difficult predicaments related to the coronavirus, and the stress has taken its toll. Dur…
You can’t fix what is already broken
It’s one of the last weeks in December. If it was any other year, I would have realized that Christmas is around the corner, the air would be filled with a different, radiant, joyful kind of energy, and most of us would be focused on all the less…
The degradation and devaluation of nurses
Where do I begin? Maybe at the beginning. Let’s start with the degradation and devaluation of nurses across this country. For decades, I lived the devaluing of nurses. Daily huddles from our nurse managers, ER nurses, ICU nurses, and behavioral health …
Dying after leaving against medical advice [PODCAST]
“This is where we are: Hospitalizations rising, new variants that are more infectious, and many people believing that this is all a hoax, or that millions of people have conspired together to make injections that harm people rather than helping t…
