Doctors do blog about ER
“The part of Emergency Medicine that I truly despise? It’s those times when I whisper to a badly injured patient, ‘We’re going to take good care of you,’ and, despite all my best efforts and the efforts of the talented people with whom I work, those turn out to be the last words that person hears in this life….”
This is Robert Norris, MD, chief of emergency, writing on the division’s blog called “Straight Talk from the Stanford ER” at http://www.healthline.com/blogs/emergency_room/. The ER treats more than 40,000 patients each year. It sees all types of patients from the 4-year-old with an earache to the 20-year-old pregnant woman who just crashed her car to the 60-year-old having a massive heart attack.
Tales of life and death appear regularly on the blog, a place where the reader gets to step inside the shoes of a real ER doc, not just an actor on TV. How does an ER nurse cope? How does a resident handle the life-and-death stresses?
“It’s 3 AM. Only 3 hours left,” writes resident Sean Donahue, MD. “It’s about time for one more cup of coffee. Suddenly the calmness of my overnight pediatric shift is broken by the wailing of a crying baby. The family walks past me, looking exhausted, feet dragging, bewildered, holding a screaming child…. Time to put on the old thinking cap. This is one of the toughies.”
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