Dealing with patient death

A legendary patient died in our ED last night. Some of our providers cared for this child as Interns and then as Residents and now as an Attending. Personally, I cared for him during my PICU rotation as a Fellow. When we were done, I realized that most of our nurses and staff were involved in the resuscitation, not because we needed the extra hands, but because they know the family and wanted to be there for support. While the concept of parents or family members being present during resuscitations is controversial, I personally support it completely. My belief was again confirmed by watching this young boy's family find comfort in knowing that everything possible was done for their son. In the end, they chose to stop the resuscitation and we supported their decision.

Check out: Knazik SR - The death of a child in the Emergency Department. Ann Emerg Med - 01-OCT-2003; 42(4): 519-29

I digress

In addition to this blog, I have started to do some writing for the AAP COCM site. While working on this month's contribution, I learned about National Stay at Home Week. Initially, it sounded like a nice idea, must be an event to encourage family activity, right? I couldn't have been more wrong. This is an add campaign by ABC to encourage people to stay home, in front of the TV and watch their new Fall line-up. Gross!

I encourage everyone to stay at home, turn the TV off and talk with your family. Maybe have a week of family Olympics (games, reading, cooking dinner competitions, etc.)

My work also brought me to an interesting article about the use of the Internet to help prevent violence among teens. Check out Walton et al. Internet Referrals for Adolescent Violence Prevention: An Innovative Mechanism for Inner-city Emergency Departments in this month's Journal of Adolescent Health.

The study is very limited and advancing the groundwork started in this investigation would make a great PLC project for one of our Residents!