The hike today gave me some time to reflect on some of the things that I’ve learned, so I thought I’d share a few quotes that I wrote down during my time in Marseille so far. I appreciate all of the wisdom we have heard.

“It was in the hospital.  The one place we could not get him the medical attention that he needed.”

“If we don’t admit our mistakes, we’re doomed to repeat them again.”

“Be the change you wish to see in the World.”

“This is a calling wrapped around a profession with a service to humanity.”

“Any human system built on the expectation of continued perfect human performance has hard-wired failure into it’s structure.”

The most dangerous statement in medicine… “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

I was supervising the inpatient service when I received a call from another supervisor regarding a patient of ours who was going to be transferred to us from an outside hospital.  This hospital from which the patient was coming is an Orthopedic hospital and given Nebraska law, it is required to have an emergency room since it has “hospital” in its name.  However, no medical patients are admitted at this orthopedic facility and thus we receive a lot of medical transfers, some more serious than others.

This particular patient had presented to the emergency room with chest tightness and was reporting that it was his asthma.  The physician in the ER that night was concerned and wanted him observed overnight so was calling to transfer him to the University Hospital.  In the past there was a lot of difficulty contacting the right service to… Continue reading →