Things that make you go hmmmm
Here's one thing that blows my mind about the ED. How do people know why kind of special of the day we're having? There is no sign outside, no menu, no airplane flying overhead with a banner attached...so how do the patients know that they're supposed to complain of the ailment that day?
Last Saturday it was finger lacerations. Sunday was a migrane day. Tuesday we had a pedi clinic. Last night it was abdominal pain.
But not only abdominal pain, it was three very similar cases. All in their 80s, with dementia, female, and doting family members. AND they all came in within two hours of eachother. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, we got two women- each in her 70s- with end stage COPD on Sunday night within 5 minutes of eachother, both in respiratory failure, sitting side by side in our critical room.
And we all know this is true. It happens more often then we actually think or talk about but I really think it's an interesting phenonomen. There are the obvious reasons for the obvious situations. I'm sure the double respiratory failures had to do with the humidity we've been having lately. There's always more suicidal patients around the holidays, more CHF at Easter, Monday's are always busier after a holiday weekend. Those things you can count on. I'm talking about the odd things, like 6 people slicing their fingers at 6 pm on a Saturday.
What cosmic forces are out there coordinating this stuff? I don't want to even think of broaching the topic of religion vs. spirituality (those who know me know my true and very stong opinons on both) but this is really a funky thing we experience. With all of the things that can go wrong with the human body, why do they all seem to happen at the same time to our patients who have nothing in common?
Last Saturday it was finger lacerations. Sunday was a migrane day. Tuesday we had a pedi clinic. Last night it was abdominal pain.
But not only abdominal pain, it was three very similar cases. All in their 80s, with dementia, female, and doting family members. AND they all came in within two hours of eachother. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, we got two women- each in her 70s- with end stage COPD on Sunday night within 5 minutes of eachother, both in respiratory failure, sitting side by side in our critical room.
And we all know this is true. It happens more often then we actually think or talk about but I really think it's an interesting phenonomen. There are the obvious reasons for the obvious situations. I'm sure the double respiratory failures had to do with the humidity we've been having lately. There's always more suicidal patients around the holidays, more CHF at Easter, Monday's are always busier after a holiday weekend. Those things you can count on. I'm talking about the odd things, like 6 people slicing their fingers at 6 pm on a Saturday.
What cosmic forces are out there coordinating this stuff? I don't want to even think of broaching the topic of religion vs. spirituality (those who know me know my true and very stong opinons on both) but this is really a funky thing we experience. With all of the things that can go wrong with the human body, why do they all seem to happen at the same time to our patients who have nothing in common?
posted by Cass @ 8:56 AM
1 Comments:
At 5:31 PM,
Anonymous said…
That was the strangest thing about working in the ED... the similarity of complaints. We only had one room strictly for lacs, and we'd always get like 4 or 5 real bad ones in need of sutures around the same time. It was amazing... one night during the winter we had 3 guys come in with hand lacs after messing with snow blowers LOL.
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