A blog about the inner workings of the field of medicine and its theoretical, practical, and ethical complexities.
By: Aaron Rothstein
October 20, 2014
The obstetrics nurses rushed the stretcher through the triage station as the resident tore out of her chair and followed them. I jumped up and ran with her. It was the second night of my obstetrics rotation and there was no time for triaging this patient, who was on the verge of giving birth. And because she spoke almost no English we...
September 22, 2014
He lay in the hospital bed, belly-up, staring at the ceiling. We knocked as we entered and asked the patient a barrage of questions. How was he feeling? What doctors had he seen in the past? What other medical conditions did he have? When did he first start to notice uncontrolled nosebleeds? What other symptoms did he notice? An endless...
September 5, 2014
During one Emergency Department (ED) shift, EMTs brought in an older woman to the hospital. She had called emergency medical services (EMS) and explained that she had low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia can lead to coma, brain damage, and death as well as other more minor symptoms such as tremors and sweats. But when the EMTs...
August 26, 2014
Imagine, for a moment, that your kidneys have failed. Perhaps you had longstanding, uncontrolled diabetes. Or, you might have had persistently high blood pressure (hypertension). You could not afford your medications, you refused to take them, or you never even visited your doctor and thus never knew you were sick. Whatever the...
August 19, 2014
This post continues my description in the last one of a day in the life of a medical student on rotation, where I’ve left off at lunchtime of an inpatient service day. During the afternoon, the work of executing plans continues. If the team discharges a patient, that patient needs a follow-up appointment in clinic to make sure...
August 7, 2014
My editors here at The New Atlantis suggested I write about what a day is like for me and other members of the medical team. What exactly (aside from rounding) do we do all day? When do we have to be in? When do we leave? What goes on when we’re not rounding? We can divide the third year of medical school into three distinct...
August 1, 2014
“Here is a hand-to-hand struggle in all its horror and frightfulness,” wrote Henri Dunant, a nineteenth-century international activist, in his book A Memory of Solferino. The book concerns the Battle of Solferino in June of 1859 between the Austrians and the French. Dunant describes the combatants “trampling each other under foot,...
July 10, 2014
There was a crowd of security guards, physicians, and nurses in an ED room. The patient inside squirmed and writhed on the stretcher while sweating profusely, soaking his clothing and the hospital bed. Though slender and slightly cachectic, the patient had fought off the security entourage multiple times, like a snake slipping from their...
June 24, 2014
Image via Shutterstock I had just finished introducing myself to the resident when the EMTs wheeled in a patient on a stretcher. The patient’s face was completely pale and expressionless and his eyes were closed; his hair looked disheveled and unwashed. He wore tattered jeans, a soiled white t-shirt with holes, and white sneakers with...
June 16, 2014
Hospital image via Shutterstock The paramedics flying the patient in by helicopter called the Emergency Department charge nurse and described the patient: a 40-year-old male in a construction accident with deep lacerations (wounds) to the left leg. The moment between the paramedics’ call and arrival was only a few minutes. During this...