Opinion: I’ve worked 300 ER night shifts. Boarding is what breaks us
The hardest part of my job isn’t trauma. It’s the admitted patient who spends two days on a hallway stretcher because there is no bed upstairs.
Julian Abernathy
Emergency physician in Albuquerque and editor of Second Opinion, our essays from clinicians, researchers and patients. Works nights, writes mornings.
Opinion: My patients can’t read their discharge papers. That’s our failure, not theirs
The instructions we hand patients on the way out the door are written for lawyers and billing departments. We can do better, and it would not cost much.
What a 20-year study of night-shift nurses can and can’t tell us
A long study linked years of night shifts to earlier joint problems in nurses. Here is how to read it, from a doctor who has worked a lot of nights.