Could you imagine being responsible for multiple lives daily? I'm not talking your immediate family or friends either, but complete strangers... as your profession. I couldn't.
Shout out to medical professionals worldwide. You are greatly appreciated.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
Dedicate Yourself To One Task At A Time
“Pharmacy technician here. I once was very stressed and I was rushing. Instead of prednisone 5mg, I used prednisone 50mg (prednisone is a steroid). The pharmacist checked it and didn’t catch it, but I realized when I was putting my stock bottles away. Luckily it hadn’t gone out yet, so I fixed the mistake and vowed to be 100% dedicated to one task at a time.
A few months later somebody made the exact same mistake but did not catch it, and the patient ended up in the hospital for a few months.”
‘They Depend On Our Patience’
“Once as a tired medical resident, I was called to the ER to admit someone at like 3 am. This bonehead had a gallbladder removal a week ago and now had a surgical-site wound infection. I asked if they’d taken their post-op antibiotics they were prescribed, and they weren’t sure. I was getting more and more frustrated with this imbecile preventing my sleep when I decided to use a ‘pregnant pause’ interview technique, and just shut up. This usually results in either awkward silence and the patient saying ‘uhh, what the heck doc’ or awkward silence followed by some useful deep revelation.
In this case, the guy hung his head low, looked at his feet through unfocused eyes, started to sniffle while his halting voice cracked, ‘I can’t read. Never could. Didn’t know the instructions they wrote down for me and didn’t know I had medicine to buy. I didn’t ask them because I was embarrassed.’
Illiteracy haunts rural and urban places in most countries. Those folks aren’t reading this, and they depend on our patience and understanding, and acceptance, to detect and bridge that vast communication gap. That’s what stuck with me.”
Blood Checks First
“When I was a new paramedic, we were called to a house for an unknown problem. We arrived and found our patient unresponsive but breathing on a bed. A friend of his found him after he hadn’t returned his phone calls – they were going out to do something that day, and he found it weird that the guy hadn’t called him yet, so he had gone to his house to investigate.
The patient didn’t have any pill bottles laying around, and his friend didn’t know anything about the patient’s medical history. So, I loaded him up into the ambulance and started transporting him to the hospital. I started an IV, did an ECG (electrocardiography), drew bloodwork, the whole work up. I got him to the hospital, and the first thing the nurse asked was ‘what was his blood sugar level?’
Oops. I forgot to check it. It turns out, it was incredibly low – which is completely treatable, and probably wouldn’t have required transporting him to the hospital if corrected on the scene. Of course, the patient probably would have been transported anyway, but I still would have initiated treatment on the scene and fixed the underlying problem. From that moment, every patient gets a blood sugar check now.”
Do Not Resuscitate!
“I work in Palliative Care, and last fall I sent a patient home to see if he could die there instead of in the hospital. We weren’t very hopeful but thought it would be worth a try. To no one’s great surprise (even his and his wife’s), he ended up coming back a couple of days later for whatever reason.
I re-admitted him since I knew him. I knew he wanted to be a DNR (do not resuscitate). I wrote it in my note. But I didn’t re-fill out the hospital paperwork. The next day, I got to work to discover he’d been coded and was on a ventilator in the ICU. Instead of passing peacefully, his wife had to make the decision to turn off life support.
My entire job at the end of life is to ensure as good a death as I can. And in one simple omission, I messed that up royally.”
‘When My Safeties Fail…’
“I’m a Cardiac Catheterization Lab Technician at a hospital, I’ve been in the medical field for almost 6 years. I was recently being cross-trained into Computed Tomography and was thrown into my first night shift by myself after a quick month of training. I had a script I would say every time I would hook someone up to our power injector for a contrast study (the weird stuff that makes you feel like you pee all over yourself). The injector I used in the cath lab is a whole lot bigger and scarier than this little thing, but they are still very dangerous. I also don’t worry about blowing IV’s since we normally go through a much tougher femoral or radial artery.
We do two test injections of saline, one by hand and one by the injector to make sure the IV is patent and will tolerate the injection. 99% of the time this works and everyone is hunky dory; if it blows, the body will simply absorb the saline and you might get a bruise so no big deal. This time, however, the IV blew RIGHT at the beginning of the contrast injection (your body CAN’T absorb contrast in this fashion) and the little pressure waveform on the injector remained ‘normal’ looking.
The patient didn’t once cry out or scream as I injected 100cc of Iodinated contrast agent into her forearm. I only noticed something was off when I started my scan and saw ZERO contrast in her torso. I aborted the scan thinking the IV blew outside of the patient, walked in and heard the patient quietly sobbing inside of the machine with an angry swollen arm about the diameter of a grapefruit. I pulled her out, wrapped a hot water soaked compress around her arm, held it over her head and rushed her back to the ER. I found out later she had to go to surgery for it and has long-term nerve damage from the compartment syndrome she suffered.
I’ve had people die on my table, I’ve been on a code team for my entire term in cath lab (respond to Code Blue/Cardiac Arrests) and see death and mutilation every day at my Level 1 Trauma hospital as the night tech. But this one stuck with me since I felt I was directly responsible for it despite being cleared. It caused me to change my WHOLE approach when doing my contrast studies. I tell people to SCREAM bloody murder if their arm does more than burn now when I inject. Insult me, throw a shoe at my window, hit the big red EMERGENCY button on the wall. Do anything so I don’t disfigure someone again when my safeties fail and my machine lies to me.”
That’s A Negative
“I do HIV testing, and once I showed up to work super tired because I couldn’t sleep the night before. This guy comes in for a test, we go through the pre-counseling and then I tell him to step out for a few minutes while the results come up.
Once he comes back to get his results, I tell him to take a seat and the first thing that came out of my mouth was ‘your results are positive,’ and then I saw the look on his face and that’s when I realized I messed up. I then said ‘Oh, no no no, I meant to say negative.’ I almost gave the guy a heart attack.”
If Grey’s Anatomy Was Real Life…
“This isn’t so much a medical error, but a time I feel that I failed my patient. I was on my first clinical rotation in a rural Emergency Room, and a woman came in with a miscarriage, her second one. While we were talking she mentioned she was new to town, didn’t know anyone, and her husband was away for the weekend. When we told her the diagnosis, her eyes became teary, and then we left to make arrangements. The doctor didn’t say he was sorry for her loss or comfort her in any way, which I instinctively wanted to do.
When I went back to her room to give her appointment time, she was in pieces. It really got me. The five seconds it would have taken me to say those words, put a hand on her shoulder, call someone, or just offer some tissues, ugh anything but I didn’t do it. Instead, I let my fear of not knowing if I would be showing too much emotion or slowing down the doc, stop me from being human.
The silver lining is now I do what my gut tells me. I’ve soothed babies from exhausted parents, picked up crying family members off the floor, and even discussed comic book heroes with kids getting stitches because that’s the kind of person I am, and the doctor I want to become.”
“Sure, What Size?”
“I’ll tell two: a funny one, and a not-so-funny one.
I was working as a pre-registration pharmacist in a community pharmacy based in a supermarket. A boy and a girl came in, nervous as heck, and stepped up to the counter. They were teenagers, probably 17 to 18 or so (in the UK age of consent is 16).
The boy asked, ‘can I have some condoms, please?’
I was serving, and we keep the condoms at the counter. They came in packs of threes, tens and the twenties. So I smiled, tried to be reassuring, but I needed to know what pack they want.
‘Sure’, I say. ‘What size?’
The boy turned bright red, but his girlfriend nudged him. He started estimating with his hands. ‘Uh…about…this long?’
The second story I’ll never forget. I was in a cancer clinic, doing follow-ups. I’d just messed up a medicine choice (I was under supervision, so it was fine), and wanted to try and ask something smart to the oncologist. So we’re in a consultation with a woman who’d had a mastectomy, and I asked the probability of recurrence of cancer.
That was stupid, because the oncologist then had to answer, and probably be very conservative, and scare the crap out of the patient. That really destroyed me. I felt like a total jerk.”
Whoops, Did I Do That?
“I’m a laboratory technician and used to work in Histology when I was new. I got a skin biopsy specimen and that day I was embedding which basically means I was putting the fixed tissue into wax, so it could be mounted on a cutting block to slice 3-micrometer sections for staining. It’s very important what side you place ‘down,’ based on how it was cut out of the body.
Well, long story short – I messed up and placed it sideways instead of down. The person cutting the tissue couldn’t tell and ended up cutting through the tissue. This was a problem because the patient had skin cancer and they were looking at how far it had spread. Since it was cut too deep they couldn’t see the edges anymore. This means the doctor had to cut a bigger piece of skin off to be sure they got it all.
That’s when I found out it was a skin biopsy from the patient’s nose. This patient had to have a bigger, potentially unnecessary, piece of skin from his face cut off because of me.
I was horrified and learned my lesson that day on how important it is to be certain of embedding technique.”
Be The Change You Want To See
“This happened to me about sixteen years ago when I was a medic in the military. This one Marine who came in for Physical Therapy seemed overly depressed (more so than usual). He had bad nerve damage (amongst other injuries) where he could touch his leg and it felt like someone was touching him in the back.
I was more focused on the therapy that day and excited he was making progress. He didn’t seem happy about the progress and made a comment about how it wouldn’t matter. I also recalled that when he left I said I would see him next week and he didn’t say anything and just left.
He hung himself that weekend. I still wonder if I had paid attention to his comments, and not had dismissed them as him having a bad day maybe he’d still be alive? Then again mental health issues were still seen as a defect when I was in the military, so I’m not sure if he would have even accepted mental health treatment.
I now pay attention to friends mood swings and signs of depression. I just wish I had done the same 16 years ago.
Also, I’m aware that the military has a long way to go in treating mental health (especially when they leave the service). Hopefully you younger folks can change the system one person at a time.”
Be Mindful Of Your Words
“I am a nuclear medicine technologist. I deal mostly with cancer patients. Prior to exams, I’ll ask the patients why they are having the test done and for any other vital information. One day, a female patient told me she found a lump, had a mammogram, a biopsy, and it turned out to be stage four invasive ductal chest cancer.
Having confirmed the information I had on my sheet with the patient, I made the mistake of saying, ‘Sounds good.’ To which she replied, ‘No, it’s actually pretty freaking terrible,’ and she broke down in tears. I will never say sounds good again when a patient tells me his or her diagnosis.”
Halloween Woes As A Physician
“If you work as a physician in an acute setting, don’t dress up for Halloween. I work in a children’s hospital we take turns ‘trick or treating’ (visiting kids and bringing them treats while dressed up), for like one hour. We get to have fun and wear costumes, but we also don’t do clinical work while dressed up. Prior to this rule, my supervising resident had to tell a family that their daughter had cancer while dressed as Cat in the Hat (respectfully, he took off the hat).
Myself personally, I lucked out. I considered starting medication for a young woman, gave her the script. 4 days later she found out she was pregnant. My prescription has clear teratogenic effects. I was sweating bullets. Fortunately, she decided against taking the prescription and I found out from our pharmacist that she didn’t fill it. I left a message ‘don’t take it!’ and she called me back thanking me for being such a great doctor. BETA HCG FOR EVERY FEMALE WITHIN SHOUTING DISTANCE OF FERTILITY.”
Again, Watch Your Words
“I once said ‘wow, that’s really cool’ after listening to a patient’s LVAD for the first time.
That’s a left ventricular assist device for heart failure that continuously circulates in a parallel circuit to the left ventricle to keep the patient alive.
He joked, ‘It’s really cool if it’s not inside you’ and I said, ‘oh right, I meant the sound and the technology, but yes I’m sorry about that.’ He was a jokester, very happy, but it did make me think twice before opening my mouth again in certain situations.
It was a cool piece of technology, but the patient’s interpretation of your words is paramount.”
‘He Still Tried To Sue’
“It didn’t turn out to have a really a serious outcome, but I’ll never forget my first mistake as an EMT. The patient was in the back of the ambulance on a gurney, and he required oxygen via a cannula (little nose things).
Normally the gurney O2 tank is much smaller than the house tank on the ambulance, so we generally switch over the gurney to the ambulance tank. Basically, there is now a small hose attached to the wall of the ambulance that feeds the patient delicious oxygen to his nose.
This being my first time, I forgot to switch back the hose to the gurney and upon removing the gurney from the back. I essentially choked the heck out of his face when the hose tightened. Poor guy, he thought he did something wrong. I explained to him what happened and then he laughed about it. I found out later he still tried to sue. Ah well.”
Important Issues That Must Be Addressed
“I’m a Hospitalist – an internal medicine doctor that specializes in Hospital (inpatient) medicine.
I had a lovely but truly unfortunate lady. She was in her late 40’s and had metastatic chest cancer. It had spread to her brain and actually to her intestine, causing persistent bleeding. She was in an out of the hospital for about 2 months.
I knew she was dying. Her oncologist knew. I began talks about what to do if she got sicker and was nearing death. She wanted ‘everything.’ I was off and my partner took over. She eventually got sicker (which I 100% expected), was bleeding again from her tumor, was placed on a ventilator and sent to the ICU.
It should never have gone that far. I should have made her sign a DNR (do not resuscitate). She had no hope of survival. She should have had a peaceful death. Instead, she was intubated and died in the ICU.
Families and patients get mad at me when I try and discuss ‘end of life goals,’ but situations like this are the exact reason why I do it. Despite patients getting ridiculously pissed at me for trying to address such an important issue.”
‘A Call, I’ll Never Forget’
“I was a medic in Israel and most of the time I was in a special ambulance for extreme emergencies or dangerous runs. After an overnight shift, I overheard that one of the morning shift medics didn’t show up for a regular ambulance so I offered to take his spot. Well, I didn’t realize at that moment that the driver and other medic were both very orthodox religious but when I did I said whatever and went with them. On the ambulance, there’s a hierarchy and in this one, I was on the bottom, mostly because I was only 18.
We got a call for an unconscious woman at a bus stop. When we got there we discovered it was a visibly homeless woman who was not breathing, had a very weak pulse, and a locked jaw. In this case, you’re supposed to break the jaw to open the airway but the other two refused to because they were men and she a woman, and they physically stopped me from intervening beyond trying to tilt her head back.
We watched her die, called the coroner and took off immediately after they arrived. I stopped working with them immediately after and went home. The next day I filled a complaint but it wasn’t taken seriously other than being told that I wasn’t allowed to be in their ambulance again. I’ll never forget that call.”