After the events of the day, I feel compelled to pull back the curtain on the life of an ER provider. This is not unique to any one ER at all. Its the same wherever you work. I had the fortune of working for a good company during my tenure and others do not have that good fortune. Depending on your shift, you walk in to chaos. Patients are everywhere. You have to decide who is the sickest amongst these masses. Everyone inherently believes they are the sickest and manners and common social courtesies are left at the patient entry into the ER. We want to provide the best care possible all while making sure patients will give us an EXCELLENT rating in order to satisfy those who have long forgotten the appearance of a bedside. We see the young, the old, the drunk, the alone, all with different ailments. We have battles with admitting doctors who, without seeing the patient, have determined they dont need to be admitted, although their family insists they do. We struggle to get labs and other diagnostic results back because the departments providing them are understaffed and overworked. We try to maintain our calm when we see a child coding in the trauma room over our shoulder, because its not my case. We try to not look at the compressions being done because its rips us to the bone as we think of our own children. We pick up the next chart and go see the next patient who inevitably complains they had to wait too long to be seen for their toothache. We resist the urge to show them the child we are fighting for across the way. We sew up people to give them the best scar possible, only to see them back next week with another cut from another fight. We see kids that are abused and we restrain from lashing out at the abuser. We see trauma that robs children of their parents and parents of their children. We see the mighty fall victim to strokes and heart attacks. We see the hopeful pregnant couple that we have to tell they have miscarried. We see our coworkers become patients. We see the worst of the world, we see the discourses between our beliefs and reality, we see the hand of God act in ways that make no sense. Then when we go to leave for the day, we find a peer review letter that suggests we should have written narcotics for a patient who received 120 the day before we saw them. Or we see a peer review letter stating we didnt repeat a test when the result is noted right there in the chart and in the admitting doctors dictation. These peer review letters are not from our peers but from a no name face that sits in an office and has never encountered a bedside. You may ask why do we do it? Because we are tough, we are compassionate, we are ER people. I left the ER because the nonsensical peer review letters were driving me insane. I left because I saw great providers be yelled at by admitting doctors and belittled. I left because I saw that the word EXCELLENT meant more than the words kind, caring, and correct. I have left the ER after my shift and cried all the way home. I have left my shift angry at how I had been talked to by an admitting doctor. I have left my shift laughing at the teamwork that got us through the night. I have left the ER rushing home to see my wife and kids because I saw other families lose both during my shift. ER people are a family. You never leave it. Its always there.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 03:56:31 +0000