The other night, I was working in the critical care area with an awesome team of nurses and Doctor Robert when a middle-aged patient unexpectedly stopped breathing and lost their pulse. We started coding the guy, working on him for over 45 minutes until we had him somewhat stabilized. As I'm compressing away on the patient's chest, you know, trying to keep him perfused, Doctor Robert tells me to "lighten up" with the compressions for fear of breaking a rib. Now I know that a broken rib could potentially cause internal injuries, but lowly tech that I am, I assumed the patient would rather be alive with rib fracture than dead with all bones intact.
I should also mention that this was all going down at shift change, and that within seconds of the oncoming attending's arrival, Doctor Robert gave a 30-second report and hit the road.
2 comments:
Jeez a doc leaving during a code/ unreal. I know a lot of ER docs go into EM for the lifestyle (no call, relatively short residency, good pay for the amount of work you do) but someone like that needs to go into a non patient care field.
another doc.
Glad I'm not the only one who sees a problem with that!
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