Burn Out
I need a vacation. I mean, really need a vacation.
The onslaught of patients just never ceases. You fix one up, transfer him to the ward and in the meantime the ER's called with three more admissions. The families are inexplicably hostile, leaving angry messages on my voicemail at regular intervals. If I answered every voicemail and met with family members of sick ICU patients each time I was asked to, I would literally not have time for anything else, like, I don't know... patient care?
The patients seem to get more and more hopeless. Yesterday, my three new consults were a young (44 years old) man with disseminated cancer and renal failure; a 73 year old with metastatic colon cancer and renal failure; a 55 year old male with multiple myeloma (hematologic cancer) and renal failure. No matter what I did, and despite the chemotherapeutic antics of the oncologists, not one of them would live out the next three months. As I was preparing to leave I got the final straw of a consult, a 97 year old woman, transferred from the nursing home with weakness. Ninetyseven years old. She was getting dialysis as an outpatient and over the last few months had developed "failure to thrive", a term borrowed from the pediatricians.
OK.
A full day's work and nothing to show for it. Yes, I know, you treat the patient in front of you and don't think about the long term philosophical issues. In the long term we're all dead anyway. Like I said. I need a vacation.
I'm off for a week of horseback riding in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana. If the past is any guide I will return ready to fight the angel with style and pananche.
Later.
The onslaught of patients just never ceases. You fix one up, transfer him to the ward and in the meantime the ER's called with three more admissions. The families are inexplicably hostile, leaving angry messages on my voicemail at regular intervals. If I answered every voicemail and met with family members of sick ICU patients each time I was asked to, I would literally not have time for anything else, like, I don't know... patient care?
The patients seem to get more and more hopeless. Yesterday, my three new consults were a young (44 years old) man with disseminated cancer and renal failure; a 73 year old with metastatic colon cancer and renal failure; a 55 year old male with multiple myeloma (hematologic cancer) and renal failure. No matter what I did, and despite the chemotherapeutic antics of the oncologists, not one of them would live out the next three months. As I was preparing to leave I got the final straw of a consult, a 97 year old woman, transferred from the nursing home with weakness. Ninetyseven years old. She was getting dialysis as an outpatient and over the last few months had developed "failure to thrive", a term borrowed from the pediatricians.
OK.
A full day's work and nothing to show for it. Yes, I know, you treat the patient in front of you and don't think about the long term philosophical issues. In the long term we're all dead anyway. Like I said. I need a vacation.
I'm off for a week of horseback riding in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana. If the past is any guide I will return ready to fight the angel with style and pananche.
Later.
posted by ICUDOC at 9:38 AM
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