My choices as a doctor in the emergency room are up or out. Up, for the very sick. I stabilize things that are broken, infected or infarcted, until those patients can be whisked upstairs for their definitive surgeries or stents in the hospital. Out, for everyone else. I stitch up the simple cuts, reassure those… Read More »
Since the implementation of the 80-hour physician residency training work week in 2003 by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the medical community has debated whether or not this was going to impact patient care and mortality. A new observational study in the British Medical Journal, demonstrated no difference in patient mortality, admission,… Read More »
How can you work for 24 hours in a row? My friends outside of medicine ask me that often. What is it like? I wondered the same thing the night before my first 24-hour shift or “24.” I lay awake worrying, ironically, that I should have gone to bed earlier to rest up for the… Read More »
GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and General Electric all made key announcements Wednesday signaling that health-care companies are shifting to focus their businesses on their greatest strengths and abandoning the diversification strategies that have characterized health care for the past two decades.