The old guy... ahem, "experienced" guy makes a valid point.
Sorry, couldn't resist!
Well you got to get old to get experienced.
ED's role in the hospital?
- Thread starter quagmire223
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Well you got to get old to get experienced.
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"Experience: Something you get right after you need it."
. How true. Around our shop we say "Good judgment is the result of bad judgment, hopefully somebody else"s."
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Thanks, everyone. I feel like ranting here keeps me from arguing too vehemently or bustin' Chuck Norris moves. I am particularly vulnerable now because I do my first official EM rotation after this, and am terrified that 1) suddenly I won't like it anymore, or worse 2) all EM docs will hate me. And I ain't got no back up specialty!!!
What I've noticed about EM docs is they're usually pretty easy going.
For the original topic posted, I think it's funny that other specialties are so ignorant to what the ED is. It's not a family practice. It's not a patient screener for on call physicians. It's the ED. The first question asked is, "Will the patient die?" That's the major concern with all patients. If it's a probably not, they start the ball rolling on tests to figure out, within the patient's 2-4 hour stay, what they probably have. Then they move to a room where a nurse has informed them (verbally or by room assignment) that "We think this patient is going to die."
Patient 1 can wait. Patient 2 needs attention. Later, when any possible life threats are ruled out, the patient is kicked out with a script that will start working on what they probably have (and they're pretty accurate about the dx-just from observing on call docs coming in and usually agreeing with what the EM doc says), and to follow up with their doctor who has time to do a thirty minute history and exam with accurate history presented in the chart he's holding. The EM docs I work with routinely juggle 15 patients at a time with only the history the patient gives them right then (usually, unless it's a frequent flyer).
EM docs are lied to, yelled at, spit at, and cursed at by patients and still they will save the person's life or give a pretty accurate dx. Not happily, but they'll do it.
Any other physician with a patient like that in their office would call the cops and have them hauled away. Probably to the ED.
All specialties are needed. Only an idiot who spends all their time immersed in their own specialty talks down about another specialties. If you haven't lived it, breathed it, and walked 10 miles of it over and over, STFU because you don't know enough about it to offer such criticisms.
