Emergency Rooms are for Healing
Achieving success at any job in medicine requires the caregiver to dive in with heart and soul. This is particularly true for emergency physicians like Dr. James Nichols with the Baylor Emergency Medical Centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Emergency physicians like Nichols are on the front lines of healthcare. From the minute an emergency physician starts a shift in the Emergency Department, there are patients waiting to be seen, patients in the process of being seen, and some waiting for a disposition. Typically working 12-hour shifts, but, sometimes 24 hours straight, emergency physicians treat patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, with little time for breaks or meals. When their shifts end, they know there will still be more patients to be seen, all waiting desperately for the help and expertise emergency physicians provide. It is a heavy burden.
Emergency physicians are on shift weekends, holidays and nights. They manage sick people every day and see people from all walks of life, including babies and the elderly; pregnant mothers; psychiatric patients; accident victims; and victims of child abuse, rape or other terrible situations. They will see patients die in front of them, despite their extraordinary and, sometimes, heroic efforts to preserve life.
Offsetting these stress-inducing challenges are the unparalleled opportunities emergency physicians have to show empathy and make personal connections that impact the lives of patients as they deal with the pain, struggles, challenges, heartaches, joys and relief of the emergency room experience.
These are the true rewards of emergency medicine, says Nichols, a practicing emergency physician since 1994. He shared thought-provoking insights into the profession, while recently completing a typical shift in the Baylor Emergency Medical Centers ER.
“I’m at work tonight, and I’ve seen…people. Not liberals, conservatives, democrats or republicans, but simply people,” Nichols says. “Black people, Mexican people, Pakistani people, young people, old people, sad people and angry people. It’s pretty damned amazing what a handshake and legitimate concern for their condition mean to folks. We are people, nothing more.”
After reporting for his shift on this typical day, Nichols had the difficult task of comforting a devastated family whose 57-year-old father had died earlier in the ER. He describes the experience of pronouncing someone dead, and then looking the family in the eye to tell them their loved one won’t be going home that night.
“You stand in the room and listen to the wails pierce your eardrums and heart,” he says. “Let a devastated mother pound your chest and say, ‘No!’, a few hundred times. Do that enough and you’ll be punched by every color, creed, sex and religion imaginable. You’ll realize that it all feels the same, no matter the source.”
Nichols says for the first decade of his career, he battled a fear of these kinds of heart-wrenching moments.
“I was terrified of this situation,” he says. “But, slowly, I found that in that moment, there is a wonderful colorblindness and singular-minded purpose that affirms the common denominator of love and the sanctity of life we so wantonly toss about on a daily basis.”
Having empathy for ALL people, regardless of color, creed, political party, sexual orientation – or any other trait used for divisiveness, rather than inclusion – has given Nichols a new appreciation for a belief in “healthcaring as a calling.”
“Why are we wasting our precious time above ground trying to drive each other into it?” he asks. “Why do we teach our children free thinking and foster creativity if we cannot exemplify it?”
Dr. Dan Middlebrook, Chief Medical Officer at Emerus Holdings Inc., a partner of the Baylor Health Care System, says this commitment to caring, compassionate healthcare – for all patients and their families – exemplifies a deeply ingrained Emerus core value.
“The words and actions expressed by Dr. Nichols summarize so much of who we really are,” Middlebrook says. “Our jobs are not to judge, divide or discriminate. Our jobs are centered on healing, and, in so doing, we commit to addressing the physical, spiritual and emotional needs of all our patients and their families.”
