Tales From the ER

I finished pediatrics last week and have since moved onto emergency medicine.  I enjoy seeing kids quite a lot but not enough to do it full time.  I like the variety of seeing both kids and adults.  One of the things that makes pediatrics challenging is that it involves a fair amount of hand holding (i.e. reassurance) and you get a lot of non-medical questions.  In medical school we learn about things like omphalocele and intussuception.  In reality, most of the questions in pediatrics seem to involve how much formula the baby should be drinking and how often they should be pooping, neither or which was discussed much or at all in school.  Just like everything else in life, the more you do something, the better you get.  I am much more comfortable discussing such things now than I was a year ago.

As I mentioned, I have started emergency medicine.  Working in the ER is quite a bit different than working in outpatient medicine.  There is really one goal: decide if the patient is sick enough to be admitted or treated at home.  Despite being clearly labeled as a room for emergencies, it is really quite fascinating the number of patients who walk in who clearly do not have an emergent condition.  I am sure there are a number of reasons for this and to investigate these numerous reasons would be way beyond the scope of this post.  At any rate, I thought it would be amusing to share some of the chief complaints and diagnoses that come into the emergency room, most of which clearly aren't emergencies.  In a tribute to one of my favorite web sites, I will try to write the posts in a news story fashion, a la the Onion.