Overall, it was a pretty smooth day and a new attending. Today we talked a bit about surrogate decision making. This was in regard to our Creutzfeldt-Jakob patient. The new attending told us about the “empty chair” technique; inviting a potential surrogate decision maker to imagine the person as they once were sitting in a chair at the table and then to further imagine what they would want if they could see themselves as they are in the present. This was a kinda moving exercise for me just imagining myself in the shoes of the family of this patient. The idea of putting aside our own selfish wishes and desires to deeply empathize with the memory of a loved one is heart-breaking.
As far as the rest of the day, some of my patients who I thought were definitely going home over the weekend were still on the list today. It’s interesting how quickly things can change in medicine in a short amount of time. Or in some cases it’s a slight difference in assessment by different doctors.
Regardless, I picked up my old patient and picked up 2 new ones and they were all pretty much on the path home, or at least I thought so. In a couple cases, my senior thought they should stay overnight and so I went along with that plan, but when I presented to the attending that they stay overnight, he suggested that they could probably go home. I felt a bit vindicated in that, but also I still have a long way to go in terms of clinical judgement because there have been plenty of times where I have been wrong.
nANIMOv 