“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
– John Dewey
I stood there in awe as I watched the trauma team leap into action as the patient was rolled into the trauma bay. “Crush injury,” they said. Vitals were terribly unstable, and the patient was decompensating quickly. The corner of the room shielded me somewhat from the organized chaos that ensued and also gave me a great vantage point from which to observe all. I saw the paramedics calling out vitals and current treatments, the nurses starting peripheral lines, the tech prepping for a stat chest/pelvic X-ray, the ED resident placing an ET tube, and the trauma surgical resident swabbing the groin for a central line placement. Then I looked up and saw two obviously more senior physicians standing quietly near the entry with their arms crossed. You could see the mental calculations being performed and silent judgments being made.
Then it happened, the surgical resident withdrew the needle from the catheter and bright red blood began to spurt out in that all too characteristic arterial fashion. He had missed the vein and struck the artery — a surgical sin, one might say. Suddenly, the quiet observer near the door became not so quiet. The yelling ensued and the subtle belittling continued throughout the remainder of the trauma. On a later trauma, I observed this same senior physician being belittled by their superior in front of everyone, and it all made sense.
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