A couple of months ago, this short 70-year-old Chinese lady with a 6cm lump on the corner of her left jaw sat across from me and the attending. Sue was here for follow-up after completing her radiation treatment. Sue has a rare cancer of her salivary glands. The cancer invaded her jaw, so we couldn’t simply take out the cancer. Therefore, we had to treat her with radiation to decrease the size of the tumor so she can go to surgery.
On my last day on the ICU rotation block, one of the patients went into an irregular heart rhythm called ventricular tachycardia. He was a 60-something year old guy with multiple medical problems and connected to a breathing machine. All of a sudden, he became unresponsive and hypotensive and had a heart rate of 150+ beats per minute. As we all rushed into the room, we systematically ran through the ACLS algorithm. We initially evaluated him, checked for pulses, started CPR, established the airway, monitored blood pressure, identified the rhythm, and gave a dose of treatment. We repeated the process until the patient was stable. It was efficient, it was effective, and most importantly it was routine. It was a checklist that was used around the world and saved many lives.
Surprisingly, in my past month in the intensive care unit (ICU), I spent more than half the time talking to family members about goals of care. In a previous post, my attending had a great quote about survival in the ICU. If one-third of your patients survive the ICU stay, you’re doing hall of fame work. So if only one-third of patients are surviving on a good day, then why am I spending most of my time speaking to families about goals of care? Shouldn’t I be spending more time treating the patients?
The other week, I had an 18-year-old guy who came in unresponsive after overdosing on Xanax and Tylenol. We stabilized the patient, and when he woke up, I asked him why he did it. He told me that he was just doing some dumb stuff with friends. However, when I asked the father later, he told me his son has been more depressed lately and attempted suicide just last month by cutting his wrists. They didn’t seek help at the time for a variety of personal reasons, and it’s fortunate that the patient’s suicide attempt failed the second time. Fortunately, I haven’t seen a lot cases like this at my hospital, but still, he was so young. The patient had so much to live for.
One of the greatest assets of the human race as a whole is our ability to communicate with each other. This ability allows us to exchange great ideas, solve difficult problems, and express various amounts of emotion. In this post, I’m going to talk about how to communicate and a 5 step formula on how to win others to your way of thinking.
Misha convincing me to walk her more.
doctormikesblog 