Stories From Icu Doctors

Author : Diane Dennis,Aaron Calhoun,Rahul Khanna,Cameron Knott,Peter Vernon van Heerden
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2023-08-24
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9783031324017

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Stories from ICU Doctors by Diane Dennis,Aaron Calhoun,Rahul Khanna,Cameron Knott,Peter Vernon van Heerden Pdf

The intensive care unit (ICU) is a specialised hospital ward where the ‘sickest-of-the-sick’ patients, often with life-threatening illness, receive around-the-clock monitoring and life support. There is a wide spectrum of conditions managed, and these present unique challenges for those who work in this field. Written in lay language by experienced ICU doctors (Intensivists), Psychiatrists, healthcare professionals outside of medicine and other stakeholders, “Stories from ICU doctors” provides insight and commentary around the nature and management of stressors for senior doctors working in the ICU. The first five sections of the book describe the distinctive nature of the ICU environment: the human factors involved, the characteristics of thriving Intensivists, the emotions they experience, and how they behave in response. The final three sections provide a synthesis of the advice of these clinicians for both current and future Intensivists, the advice from those who surround the Intensivist both at work and at home; and some concluding remarks about trainee suitability and selection for intensive care medicine. This book is for ICU patients and their families, it is for the families of ICU doctors, it is for doctors from other specialities, it is for the nurses and others that work alongside ICU doctors, and for anyone considering a career in ICU medicine and those who care for them. We share these stories in hope that readers might better appreciate the human side of these doctors, better understand the complex working environment in which they practice, and perhaps better empathize with their stressors and struggles. Most importantly, this book is also for the ICU doctors who currently work within the specialty, to validate their feelings and experiences, and ultimately provide support by reminding them that they are not alone in navigating the difficulties they face.

Author : Laurin Bellg
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2015-12-10
Category : Near-death experiences
ISBN : 0996510303

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Near Death in the ICU by Laurin Bellg Pdf

For nearly twenty years, Laurin Bellg, MD has been present at the bedside of critically ill and dying patients. As she has worked to create an accepting and supportive relationship with them, her patients have shared with her the mysterious experience they sometimes have of apparently seeing beyond our physical world. Dr. Bellg tells her patients' engaging, powerful and sometimes humorous stories in her book, Near Death in the ICU: Stories from Patients Near Death and Why We Should Listen to Them, published in 2016 by Sloan Press. She also invites us to consider that bearing witness to a patient's near-death experience is a respectful and important part of medical care, a way for families to support their loved ones, and an important part of the patient's healing. A board-certified critical care physician, Dr. Bellg is the Chair of Medicine and ICU Medical Director for two busy intensive care units in NE Wisconsin. Dr. Bellg has also contributed to other publications about near-death studies and is an invited speaker throughout the United States on the topic.

Author : Jim Down
Publisher : Viking
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2021-11-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0241506328

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Life Support by Jim Down Pdf

A powerful, moving account of an intensive care doctor's life on the frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a doctor running the intensive care unit at one of London's top hospitals, Jim Down has spent his life working as healthcare's last resort, where the unexpected is always around the corner, and life and death decisions are an everyday occurrence. But nothing had prepared Jim and his team for the events of spring 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic descended. In Life Support, he tells the extraordinary month-by-month story of how as the nation came to a standstill, he and his colleagues donned PPE, received an unprecedented influx of patients, transformed their hospital and took on the biggest challenge in the history of the NHS. The pandemic raised difficult questions for Jim: how do you fight a new disease? How do you go home at night to your wife and young children when you've spent all day around highly infectious patients? How do you tell a mother that her healthy young son has died, only days after falling ill? With warmth, honesty and humour, this book is a gripping, moving testament to the everyday heroism of the NHS staff in a global crisis, and an unforgettable insight into what was really happening in the wards as we clapped on our doorsteps.

Author : Aoife Abbey
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2019-10-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781948924832

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Seven Signs of Life by Aoife Abbey Pdf

For Readers of Paul Kalanithi’s​ When Breath Becomes Air, an Intensive Care Doctor Reveals How Everyday Emotions Are Taken to Extremes in the ICU Dr. Aoife Abbey takes us beyond the medical perspective to see the humanity at work inside our hospitals through the eyes of doctors and nurses as they witness and experience the full spectrum of human emotion with every shift. It is their responsibility to mitigate the grief of a family in mourning, calm a patient about to die, and confront their own fear of failure when lives are on the line. Whether they're providing hospice care, tending to victims of car accidents or violent attacks, determining the correct treatment for someone displaying signs of a heart-attack or stroke, and managing staff, stress is a doctor's number one companion. Cycling through the whirlwind of emotion that accompanies every case isn’t only exhausting—it can be fatal. Told using seven key emotions—fear, grief, joy, distraction, anger, disgust, and hope—Seven Signs of Life opens the door, and heart, of the hectic life inside a hospital to reveal what it means to be alive and how it feels to care for others.

Author : Daniela Lamas
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2018-03-27
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780316393188

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You Can Stop Humming Now by Daniela Lamas Pdf

For readers of Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman, a book of beautifully crafted stories about what life is like for patients kept alive by modern medical technology. Modern medicine is a world that glimmers with new technology and cutting-edge research. To the public eye, medical stories often begin with sirens and flashing lights and culminate in survival or death. But these are only the most visible narratives. As a critical care doctor treating people at their sickest, Daniela Lamas is fascinated by a different story: what comes after for those whose lives are extended by days, months, or years as a result of our treatments and technologies? You Can Stop Humming Now, Lamas explores the complex answers to this question through intimate accounts of patients and their families. A grandfather whose failing heart has been replaced by a battery-operated pump; a salesman who found himself a kidney donor on social media; a college student who survived a near fatal overdose and returned home, alive but not the same; and a young woman navigating an adulthood she never thought she'd live to see -- these moving narratives paint a detailed picture of the fragile border between sickness and health. Riveting, gorgeously told, and deeply personal, You Can Stop Humming Now is a compassionate, uncompromising look at the choices and realities that many of us, and our families, may one day face. "Gripping, soaring, inspiring."-Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

Author : John F. Murray
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2002-07
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780520234673

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Intensive Care by John F. Murray Pdf

An experienced doctor offers a behind-the-scenes picture of an Intensive Care Unit in a large city hospital, presenting true accounts of the patients, doctors, nurses, and medical students who cope with life-affecting decisions every minute of every day.

Author : John F. Murray M.D.
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2000-07-17
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780520929029

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Intensive Care by John F. Murray M.D. Pdf

Intensive Care is an affecting view from the trenches, a seasoned doctor's minute-by-minute and day-by-day account of life in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a major inner-city hospital, San Francisco General. John F. Murray, for many years Chief of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division of the hospital and a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, takes readers on his daily ward rounds, introducing them to the desperately ill patients he treats as well as to the young physicians and medical students who accompany him. Writing with compassion and knowledge accumulated over a long career, Murray presents the true stories of patients who show up with myriad disorders: asthma, cardiac failure, gastrointestinal diseases, complications due to AIDS, the effects of drug and alcohol abuse, emphysema. Readers will come away from this book with a comprehensive understanding of what an ICU is, what it does, who gets admitted, and how doctors and nurses make decisions concerning life-threatening medical problems. Intensive care for critically ill patients is a new but well-established and growing branch of medicine. Estimates suggest that 15 to 20 percent of all hospitalized patients in the United States are treated in an intensive or coronary care unit during each hospital stay, so there is a real possibility that the reader will either be admitted to an ICU himself or herself or knows someone who will be. Murray not only offers a real-time account of the diagnosis, treatment, and progress of his patients over the course of one month but also conveys a wealth of information about various diseases and medical procedures in succinct and easy-to-understand terms. In addition, he elaborates on ethical dilemmas that he confronts on an almost daily basis: the extent of patient autonomy, the denial of ICU care, the withdrawal of life support, and physician-assisted suicide. Murray concludes that ICUs are doing their job, but they could be even better, cheaper, and--most important--more humane. His chronicle brings substance to a world known to most of us only through the fiction of television.

Author : Rana Awdish
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2017-10-24
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781250119223

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In Shock by Rana Awdish Pdf

A riveting first-hand account of a physician who's suddenly a dying patient, In Shock "searches for a glimmer of hope in life’s darkest moments, and finds it.” —The Washington Post Dr. Rana Awdish never imagined that an emergency trip to the hospital would result in hemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. But after her first visit, Dr. Awdish spent months fighting for her life, enduring consecutive major surgeries and experiencing multiple overlapping organ failures. At each step of the recovery process, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected: repeated cavalier behavior from her fellow physicians—indifference following human loss, disregard for anguish and suffering, and an exacting emotional distance. Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written, In Shock allows the reader to transform alongside Awidsh and watch what she discovers in our carefully-cultivated, yet often misguided, standard of care. Awdish comes to understand the fatal flaws in her profession and in her own past actions as a physician while achieving, through unflinching presence, a crystalline vision of a new and better possibility for us all. As Dr. Awdish finds herself up against the same self-protective partitions she was trained to construct as a medical student and physician, she artfully illuminates the dysfunction of disconnection. Shatteringly personal, and yet wholly universal, she offers a brave road map for anyone navigating illness while presenting physicians with a new paradigm and rationale for embracing the emotional bond between doctor and patient.

Author : Sue Hall
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0982827393

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For the Love of Babies: One Doctor's Stories About Life in the Neonatal ICU by Sue Hall Pdf

Author : Wes Ely
Publisher : Scribe Publications
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2021-09-28
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781922586100

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Every Deep-Drawn Breath by Wes Ely Pdf

A world-renowned critical-care doctor offers hope for patients, their families, and the future of medicine in this timely, urgent, and compassionate work about the devastating and little-known physical and emotional effects of ICU stays. As COVID-19 survivors are discharged from hospitals, grateful to be alive, most don’t realise that the hardest part of their battle may be about to begin. Many will return home and struggle with long-term physical, mental, and emotional problems either caused or exacerbated by the life-saving treatment they received in intensive care. They’ll join the ranks of critical-care survivors whose lives are completely upturned by a hospital stay. More than half of the patients admitted to ICUs will struggle with post-intensive care syndrome, which can include Alzheimer’s-like cognitive deficits, PTSD, muscle and nerve damage, and depression. Their personal and professional lives can suffer irreparably. Worst of all, no one seems to understand that they have an illness at all. Not even their doctors. Dr Ely is now a leader in the field of ICU survivorship — advocating for compassionate care in the technology-driven enclave of the modern ICU — especially relevant during the coronavirus pandemic. In Every Deep-Drawn Breath, Dr Ely sounds a warning for the millions of people who will be admitted to ICUs in coming years and a wake-up call for healthcare professionals — himself included — to turn their gaze from the latest life-saving machines to really see, as he says, ‘the person in the patient’.

Author : Lisa Sanders
Publisher : Harmony
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2010-09-21
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780767922470

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Every Patient Tells a Story by Lisa Sanders Pdf

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, ‘What is wrong with me?’ They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it—on some level—restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer." A healthy young man suddenly loses his memory—making him unable to remember the events of each passing hour. Two patients diagnosed with Lyme disease improve after antibiotic treatment—only to have their symptoms mysteriously return. A young woman lies dying in the ICU—bleeding, jaundiced, incoherent—and none of her doctors know what is killing her. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving these and other diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in human history have doctors had the knowledge, the tools, and the skills that they have today to diagnose illness and disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows us that knowledge, while essential, is not sufficient to unravel the complexities of illness. She presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness—the diagnosis—revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders portrays the absolute necessity and surprising difficulties of getting the patient’s story, the challenges of the physical exam, the pitfalls of doctor-to-doctor communication, the vagaries of tests, and the near calamity of diagnostic errors. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Sanders chronicles the real-life drama of doctors solving these difficult medical mysteries that not only illustrate the art and science of diagnosis, but often save the patients’ lives.

Author : Sue L Hall M D
Publisher : WorldMaker Media
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2011-05-20
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780982827376

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For the Love of Babies by Sue L Hall M D Pdf

For the Love of Babies: One Doctor's Stories About Life in the Neonatal ICU invites readers into the NICU - one area in the hospital that is unfamiliar and frightening to most people - and demystifies the place where extraordinary things transpire. This book is for anyone who has ever wondered how doctors and nurses work under intense pressure to diagnose and treat the smallest of patients and how parents cope with the enormous emotional stresses facing them. It is a touching and unforgettable glimpse into the triumph, loss, happiness, and pain that make up the daily rhythms of life in the NICU.

Author : Aoife Abbey
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Critical care medicine
ISBN : 1444844164

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Seven Signs of Life by Aoife Abbey Pdf

What if your ability to manage your emotions was the difference between life and death? For an Intensive Care doctor, this is part of the job. Fear in the eyes of a terminally ill patient. Grief when you make a potentially fatal mistake. Disgust at caring for a convicted rapist. But there are also moments of joy, like the rare bright spots of lucidity for a dementia patient, or when the ward unexpectedly breaks into song. Dr Aoife Abbey shows us what a doctor sees of humanity as it comes through the revolving door of the hospital, taking us beyond a purely medical perspective. Told through seven emotions, SEVEN SIGNS OF LIFE is about what it means to be alive and how it feels to care for a living.

Author : Abraham Verghese
Publisher : BookRags
Page : 42 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : AIDS (Disease)
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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My Own Country by Abraham Verghese Pdf

Author : Atul Gawande
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2010-04-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781429953382

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The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande Pdf

The New York Times bestselling author of Being Mortal and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third. In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds. An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.