Children should not be permitted to sing Christmas carols in the intensive care unit. People who have yet to lose all of their primary teeth do not need to catch glimpses of unconscious people who require mechanical ventilators to breathe. People who still have several years before they experience puberty do not need to witness people groaning with pain and discomfort while nurses pull bloody gauze packing out of a gaping surgical wound. People who do not (theoretically) understand what death fully entails (but then again, how many of us truly comprehend all the details of the cessation of life?) should not be allowed into the intensive care unit which is so often the antechamber that leads to death's door.Technorati Tags: Doctor Stories, Intensive Care Unit, Medicine
I'm Dr. Joshua Schwimmer, a nephrologist and internal medicine physician in New York City. • Kidney Notes was the first active nephrology blog. (Trivia: Kidney Notes is so old that the National Library of Medicine still uses it as an example of how to formally cite blogs.) • Professionally, you can find me at Kidney.nyc. • Kidney Notes is for educational purposes only, not medical advice. Consult qualified health care professionals. See disclaimer.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Doctor Stories #10: Three Opinions
From Intueri: