241–250 of 387 posts
Imagine being jetlagged all the time for 10-15 days while random people are poking and prodding you.
> 1. The ICU is filled with old people... Pretty much all these patients are on Medicare, which means your taxpayers dollars are making this happen. This ignores the (I think) very strong possibility that the old people are preferentially selected by the system because, thanks to Medicare, they can _afford_ the ICU. Many people aged less than 65 cannot. Consider the idea that if we had something like "Medicare for al…
> There’s no sense of a scientific method, reasoning from first principles, or even reasoning from similar cases though. It’s all shooting in the dark, and most of the time I felt like I could have done just as good a job on these longterm issues... This articulates very well what I've usually felt when dealing with doctors. It's like the story of a programmer finding that his code outputs 5 when it should be 4, and…
I'm sorry but curiosity and creativity are certainly the n°1 enemy of the patient, especially in ICU settings. Curiosity and creativity are grandpa's medicine, and a total antithesis to evidence-based modern medicine, that attempts (and largely fails) to be an application of science instead of the whims of the decision-makers. What you should want is curious and creative _researchers_, but precise and totally unimagi…
Since you’ve used a slightly fancy Unicode character: I found U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN unpleasant here, and it took a brief bit of thought to understand. (A capital N would probably have helped a little, but the degree sign is still disconcerting.) The character you want is №, U+2116 NUMERO SIGN. If you happen to be using a Compose key, `Compose N o`.
For less fancy options, “#” and “number ” would both be better choices and easier to read than “n°”.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right that silencing alarms is strictly forbidden in anesthetic territory only, not ICU. I'm biased bc I'm in Switzerland, and here the coverage ratio is usually 1:1. The country is so rich, that many things are different here... they really are near the patient at all times. To give you an idea: the day COVID really hit, we received 180 shiny new Hamilton respirators complete with additional staff overnight,…
I want to clarify two points given the language used in your response: 1. I used the possessive “my” in reference to nursing staff for simplicity in writing and clarity to the reader rather than to indicate ownership, we are on a team. This is akin to saying “my goalkeeper wears Nike soccer cleats”. 2. I do not “order nurses around.” I verbally communicate and leave medical orders in the chart that nurses act on. It…
> There’s no sense of a scientific method, reasoning from first principles, or even reasoning from similar cases though. It’s all shooting in the dark, and most of the time I felt like I could have done just as good a job on these longterm issues... This articulates very well what I've usually felt when dealing with doctors. It's like the story of a programmer finding that his code outputs 5 when it should be 4, and…
I'm sorry but curiosity and creativity are certainly the n°1 enemy of the patient, especially in ICU settings. Curiosity and creativity are grandpa's medicine, and a total antithesis to evidence-based modern medicine, that attempts (and largely fails) to be an application of science instead of the whims of the decision-makers. What you should want is curious and creative _researchers_, but precise and totally unimagi…
Creativity also has a role for non-critical conditions when standard treatments aren’t working.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jeez, no kidding. I imagine if they made a realistic doctor show they'd be constantly showing the doctor at the bar (on days off) trying to make money on side gigs like health startups. Stumbling in a hangover to appointments on "work days" and giving everyone the same diagnosis as the last (and likely whatever sickness they themselves had recently). Also giving everyone fluids and an ativan so the patient says - "i…
You should check out The Resident. The first several seasons are about the doctor invested in a device that is a fraud, a private equity group buying the hospital, it eventually failing. Chicago MD has some of the aspects you mention, especially overloaded, drug abuse, blame, police interactions. New Amsterdam attacks it by the main character trying to solve the problems and running into bureaucracy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry but curiosity and creativity are certainly the n°1 enemy of the patient, especially in ICU settings. Curiosity and creativity are grandpa's medicine, and a total antithesis to evidence-based modern medicine, that attempts (and largely fails) to be an application of science instead of the whims of the decision-makers. What you should want is curious and creative _researchers_, but precise and totally unimagi…
If medical treatment was actually as formulaic and fully-solved as you imply, we wouldn't take the best students of every generation and make them spend ten years training to become doctors. We'd just have nurses, checklists, and diagnosis flowcharts.
But it is just as formulaic as described above. The doctors aren't trying to solve your issue. They're following a flowchart, and if that doesn't work for you, that's your problem, not theirs. Next time, be a better patient.
I've had doctors tell me "Good news! You don't have a problem!" when they were testing me to see if they could explain the problem I have. It's good news for them, because their next step is to tell me to fuck off. It's not good news for me, but apparently they can't tell the difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you don’t want creativity in the ICU, but as a patient with chronic health issues, I do want creative clinicians. Over and over my entire life, I’ve gone to doctors with health issuesand watched as they mentally plug my symptoms into a flowchart that they learned in medical school, then they find that the symptoms don’t match anything that a standard protocol can treat, then they shrug their shoulders and say t…
Completely agree. Any educated layperson can figure out and follow a clinical decision tree. I mean it can work in your favor if you know you need something and know how to get the decision tree to give you what you want, but otherwise clinicians should definitely be actual experts and not just meat following something a computer could do
12-15h a day, 6 days a week with not even a lunch break? You're sorely mistaken. It takes an expert to follow clinical workflows.
Author of Hacking Health for O'Reilly, managed operating companies for hundreds of hospital facilities, etc... One widely under realized aspect to healthcare costs in the US (there are many) is the very high number of ICU beds per capita, ~35 per 100,000 people. While it gets a little complicated to compare apples to apples, a reasonable person could say we have 30% more than germany which is the only european contry…
This is a practical reality of the "we keep old people alive too long" category.
Interesting take. I was in a paediatric cardiac ICU when my daughter battled with heart disease for 7 of her 8 month life. Another dad who we got close to in the ICU said the phrase "practising medicine says it all...". My experience is same same but different. It was during COVID, so we welcomed the nurse change, sad/happy to see one go and welcome another. Paediatric ICUs and their staff, I'd say are top tier in mo…