I’m not dead, just dead-tired. I get a break soon, and it’ll pick up here then.
Until that time, here’s some things that are completely unconnected.
Read about the trial and conviction of an ED doc in USA today. Oh, actually, he’s just tried and convicted in the paper.
A story: a bitter divorce is finally concluding, and the soon to be ex-hubby (h) calls the soon to be ex-wife (w) as such:
h: I’d like to come over tonight, and we can divide the wine collection in half. (Big, expensive collection).
w: Okay, come over after 5.
It’s after 5.
h: okay, let’s divide them
w: I already have – (points to a room)
In the next room are all the wine bottles, uncorked. Next to each is an unlabled mason jar, with 1/2 of the bottle poured into it.
w: your half is in the jars.
Heh.
I think most of us would have admitted the first patient in that article based on the account as written. As we all know, shift change is the riskiest time in the ED. It sounds like the physician wrote discharge prescriptions and medications, so either he stayed later than 7 am, or he wrote for the patient to be discharged if the CT was OK. I doubt that the patient had a chest CT result completed within two hours. He would have had to have his creatinine checked prior to getting IV contrast, so it probably wasn’t even ordered until 7, thus the three hour delay until discharge.
This is why shift change is dangerous. The first ED doc had left at 7 am (according to his attorney), with discharge instructions already written (perhaps pending normal CT). The patient complains of chest tightness just before 10 am. The oncoming doc is notified, and sees that the patient is written up to go home already. Ideally, the patient should have been re-evaluated and have a third ECG performed at least. THe morning doc has his own patients to deal with, and the nurses are eager to turn over the room, so the patient is discharged. Realistically, the second doc is probably going to get served too, as well as the nurses and the hospital.
But my favorite line is “The Pettry family is considering a lawsuit, but his adult children say what they want most is for other lives to be saved.”
Yeah, right. They have the hospital records, and the physician has an attorney. That means the family already has an attorney and has already filed a claim, and it isn’t just asking for “other lives to be saved.”