What have I been doing?
I have been blaming the air for my shortness of breath. And I have been blaming the allergy season for my tears during the film showings on these two days. The truth is that I have been having more visceral reactions toward the patient safety stories. It gets emotional easily when I think that my family could have been the one affected by similar events.
Obtaining informed consents occupies a relatively minor part of a resident’s day. After viewing Michael’s story, I have to ask whether it should be the case. The moment when an informed consent is being obtained, usually is a critical time in a patient’s stay: it means a likely diagnosis was suggested and it means a possible treatment has been proposed.
It should be a time of many questions: how was the diagnosis obtained? what else could… Continue reading
Marseille Resident Summer Camp Class of 2014 Introductions
Meet this year’s Marseille Patient Safety Summer Camp class of resident physician alumni, poised to change the world of patient safety and patient care!
This year’s residents are working in: Rehab medicine, pediatrics, emergency and internal medicine, anesthesia, radiology and looking to gain acceptance to fellowships in pulmonary critical care, hem/onc, GI, hepatobiliary surgery, nephrology, interventional radiology, health administration, robotic surgery and pediatric anesthesia.
Members of this year’s group were born as far away as India, Taiwan and Germany, have attended medical school in Iowa, Missouri, California, Georgia, Texas, Utah, New York and Poland, and are doing their residencies across the country with a large contingent attending from the MedStar Health system in the Washington DC/Baltimore area, from New York and California hospitals and sponsored by the Committee of Interns and Residents in New York, and by COPIC in Colorado, representing a respectable cross section of the… Continue reading
Reflections on Lewis Blackman
Unfortunately, there were countless errors from before the start of Lewis’ surgery all the way through the handling of his death. The one systematic error I will comment on is physician-patient communication. Every patient undergoing a procedure needs to sign an INFORMED consent, which includes understanding the risks, benefits and alternatives to the treatment being offered. The situation continued to tailspin into a downward spiral as family was unaware of the expectations post op. There were multiple efforts made by the patient’s mother and nursing staff to notify the physicians that something was wrong. The physicians ignored the most valuable resource available to them, Lewis’ mother, who knows him better than anybody else. Her concerns were repeatedly disregarded or ignored because the doctor did not want to believe something was wrong.
Dr Levy eloquently stated, ” if you can’t see your mother/sister/daughter/son in your patient,… Continue reading