In the Emergency Department, we treat a wide variety of patients, so you must learn how to harmonize with everyone from CEOs and celebrities to blue-collar workers, alcoholics, drug dealers, criminals, feisty old folks, exhausted parents, defiant teenagers, babies, and everything in between.
As a first year resident in Emergency Medicine — I have had many colleagues ask me one simple question, “What about burnout?” To be honest, I never quite understood why so many non-Emergency Medicine colleagues seem to think burnout is more likely to occur in Emergency Medicine than in other specialties. Perhaps because Emergency Medicine is so appealing, that it must be too good to be true!?
But let’s be honest, working as an ER doc is probably more stressful than you imagine — but a career in Emergency Medicine is also vastly more rewarding than you likely realize. You will have some people wrap their arms around you and not want to let go, but you’ll also have other patients who will want to rip your spleen out and eat it. At the end of the day — saving lives is arguably the most important and rewarding job in the world. As an Emergency Physician, no other specialty will give you so many opportunities to help so many people in so many ways.
Ketamine, also known as “Special K” in some circles — produces effects similar to phencyclidine (PCP) and dextromethorphan (DXM), but it is also has many powerful treatment options.
Ketamine is primarily used for the induction and maintenance of general anesthesia, usually in combination with a sedative. Other uses include sedation in intensive care, analgesia (particularly in emergency medicine), and treatment of bronchospasm.
Let’s get down to the specifics..
Ketamine is a noncompetitive N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist that blocks the release of excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and provides anesthesia, amnesia, and analgesia by virtue of decreasing central sensitization and the “wind-up” phenomenon.
To the consternation of young physicians, the general public perception is that all medical practitioners are wealthy, which may be the reason why we hear so much grumbling over the cost of health care costs. What is largely lost on the public is that the vast majority of physicians begin their careers deep in a hole both in terms of money and time. It is difficult for the average person to fully gauge, let alone appreciate the monetary and time commitment that goes into preparing for the profession. Even before they confront the lifelong challenge of building personal wealth from a medical practice, new physicians are lined up well behind the starting line for a number of reasons..
The findings are based on more than 170,000 interviews of U.S. adults conducted last year, and measure well-being in terms of physical health, emotional health and fiscal health.
In terms ofphysical fitness, people who work in the farming, fishing or forestry industry scored the highest on exercise, with 65.5 percent of them saying that they worked out for a minimum of a half-hour for three days (at least!) the week prior. Doctors were the next highest, followed by construction workers/miners, business owners and nurses.
For healthy eating, nurses had all the occupations beat with 64.8 percent saying they had five or more servings of fruits and vegetables for at least four days of the prior week. They were followed by K-12 teachers, business owners, and then doctors.
As far asunhealthyhabits are concerned, transportation workers were the most likely to be obese, with 37.1 percent of them reporting being obese. Manufacturing or production workers had the next highest obesity rate — at 29.6 percent — followed by installation and repair workers, and clerical or office workers.
People who work in construction or mining had the highest smoking rate in the report, with 32.4 percent reporting smoking. They were followed by installation and repair workers, then transportation workers, then manufacturing or production workers.
For a look at which jobs scored the lowest and the highest foroverallwell-being, see below..
If you’re finishing up residency or fellowship, you’ve spent the last 4, 5, 6, 7, maybe even 8 years being paid about 18 cents per hour. Now you’re out there looking for your first “real” job. So when someone comes along and offers you a 6-figure salary, it’s tempting to accept it, no matter how unfair the offer actually is. Unfortunately, some employers are anxious to take advantage of young physicians who are desperate to take any job that will help them begin to pay off their enormous student loans. So many times young physicians wind up accepting compensation under their physician employment agreement that is not up to par with market standards. After all, it’s hard to know what the market standard is when you don’t have access to national physician compensation benchmark data. Before you accept a physician employment contract offer, be sure someone is looking out for your financial and legal interests.
Many physicians, especially those fresh out of training, are hasty about accepting the first job offer that comes their way because they have enormous student loans to pay off, and they haven’t yet endured a horrific employment experience that has taught them to tread carefully into any given employment arrangement. After all, when you’re out there looking for your first job, the potential employers are great salespeople- reassuring you that your wants and needs will be met.
In a monumental first for medicine, doctors announced today that a baby has been cured of an HIV infection. Dr. Deborah Persaud, who presented the child’s case today at the 20th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infection, called it “definitely a game-changer.”
Persaud, of Johns Hopkins University Medical School, is the lead author of a report recounting the child’s treatment. The identity of the little girl, who was born to an HIV-positive woman in rural Mississippi, has yet to be released. What we do know is that she is only the second person in the world — and the first child — to be cured of HIV in its devastating 32-year history. If the case is confirmed, it is truly unprecedented.
In things that you thought only happened at Seattle’s Grace Hospital, medical professional magicians at a London hospital recently drastically dropped a baby’s core temperature for four days to save his life. Dude. Science. Right?
I bet you’re asking yourself what is this magical wonder drug? It’s chocolate, and with it, winning a Nobel Prize may have just gotten easier! Findings published in TheNew England Journal of Medicine in October 2012 show that countries with more chocolate consumers produce significantly more Nobel laureates, possibly through enhanced cognition. The study comes on the heels of mounting data showing that chocolate consumption not only improves brain function but may also offer a host of other health benefits. The American Chemical Society even devoted an entire 3-hour symposium to the ancient indulgence at their 2012 annual meeting. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’ve reviewed the recent literature purporting health benefits of chocolate.
A man from Nanjing, China, has recently made headlines after it was discovered he built his own dialysis machine, and managed to keep himself alive for 13 years, after he couldn’t afford to receive proper hospital care.
A research from 2008, shows only one in ten Chinese people can afford regular dialysis treatment, but one man refused to give in to his illness simply because he couldn’t pay the high hospital costs.
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