I Promise
All around me, men and women of different rankings pass by the ER with varying levels of urgency. Bouncing a tennis ball, I stared through the glass door of my office, labeled “Doug P Mills, M.D., Head of Diagnostic Medicine. The passages of this hospital cried with emotional distress. Patients, doctors, nurses, and visitors all share one thing in common: empathy. The walls reek of tears and hope. For me, I’m amused at the doctors that lose sleep over their patients. Emotion is just a nuisance. “Dr. Mills,” one of the new nurses barged through my door, “something is wrong with patient Karen Sullivan.” “Who?” I wasn’t in the mood to deal with other people’s problems, I had enough of my own. “Your patient-- in room 56-- she’s …show more content…
I trust the four years of medical school, three years of residency, two years of specialization, and five years of experience that have brought me to where I am today, but I still feel like that is not enough. I’ve narrowed down thirteen different diagnostic possibilities to two, but the two that remain are dangerous to test for. At this point it’s do or die. If I make the right call, there is a fairly high chance of recovery, but the wrong call will kill him. In five years working at the IUPUI Hospital, I’ve never encountered such a situation. I’ve had patients die. I’ve saved patients. But I’ve never had a ticking time bomb of ethical and moral distress as a patient. What people realize about doctors is the ethical standards behind the practice of medicine. There may be a treatment method for a dying patient, but a series of consent forms and board meetings have to take place in order for the process to begin. By then the patient most likely will have died. Some treatments are too cruel to administer to a teenager or child, so even if it is the best and most efficient method of treatment, we can’t risk it. The door slides open and Barry’s parents barge through straight to their dying son. They must have just been informed of the great possibility of
All around me, men and women of different rankings pass by the ER with varying levels of urgency. Bouncing a tennis ball, I stared through the glass door of my office, labeled “Doug P Mills, M.D., Head of Diagnostic Medicine. The passages of this hospital cried with emotional distress. Patients, doctors, nurses, and visitors all share one thing in common: empathy. The walls reek of tears and hope. For me, I’m amused at the doctors that lose sleep over their patients. Emotion is just a nuisance. “Dr. Mills,” one of the new nurses barged through my door, “something is wrong with patient Karen Sullivan.” “Who?” I wasn’t in the mood to deal with other people’s problems, I had enough of my own. “Your patient-- in room 56-- she’s …show more content…
I trust the four years of medical school, three years of residency, two years of specialization, and five years of experience that have brought me to where I am today, but I still feel like that is not enough. I’ve narrowed down thirteen different diagnostic possibilities to two, but the two that remain are dangerous to test for. At this point it’s do or die. If I make the right call, there is a fairly high chance of recovery, but the wrong call will kill him. In five years working at the IUPUI Hospital, I’ve never encountered such a situation. I’ve had patients die. I’ve saved patients. But I’ve never had a ticking time bomb of ethical and moral distress as a patient. What people realize about doctors is the ethical standards behind the practice of medicine. There may be a treatment method for a dying patient, but a series of consent forms and board meetings have to take place in order for the process to begin. By then the patient most likely will have died. Some treatments are too cruel to administer to a teenager or child, so even if it is the best and most efficient method of treatment, we can’t risk it. The door slides open and Barry’s parents barge through straight to their dying son. They must have just been informed of the great possibility of