Critical Care

As a young critical care physician, Dr. Rana Awdish was transfigured from a doctor into a critically ill patient in an instant. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly laid bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.

Host Dr. John Russell chats with Dr. Rana Awdish about this transformation and how she came to understand the fatal flaws in her profession, from her own past actions as a physician to the perils of navigating her own illness. She presents a new paradigm and rationale for embracing the emotional bond between doctor and patient and outlines the redemptive possibilities of dismantling the barriers to connection in all relationships.

Dr. Awdish is the author of In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope and Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Host Dr. Russell sits down with Dr. Steven Hatch, an infectious disease specialist and author of the book, Inferno: a Doctor's Ebola Story, about his experience in Liberia during the heart of the Ebola crisis.

Dr. Steven Hatch first came to Liberia in November 2013, to work at a hospital in Monrovia. Six months later, several of the physicians Dr. Hatch had mentored and served with were dead or barely clinging to life, and Ebola had become a world health emergency. Hundreds of victims perished each week; whole families were destroyed in a matter of days; so many died so quickly that the culturally taboo practice of cremation had to be instituted to dispose of the bodies. With little help from the international community and a population ravaged by disease and fear, the war-torn African nation was simply unprepared to deal with the catastrophe.

A physician’s memoir about the ravages of a terrible disease and the small hospital that fought to contain it, Inferno is also an explanation of the science and biology of Ebola: how it is transmitted and spreads with such ferocity. And as Dr. Hatch notes, while Ebola is temporarily under control, it will inevitably re-emerge―as will …

What if Americans put aside their differences and worked together to fix America's broken healthcare system? What changes need to be made in order to make health care both accessible and affordable without compromising excellent quality of care standards for patients? These and other crucial questions form premise behind the book We CAN Fix Healthcare: The Future is NOW.

Host Dr. John Russell sits down with Dr. Stephen Klasko, President and CEO of Jefferson University and Jefferson Health and author of We CAN Fix Healthcare: The Future is NOW.

Each year more than 70 million post-surgical patients are prescribed opioids. Research shows 1 in 15 will go on to use the medications long term, potentially putting them at risk for addiction and overdose.

Host Dr. Brian McDonough sits down with Dr. Susan Downey, a board-certified plastic surgeon, to talk about opioid abuse and what alternative prescription options are available instead of narcotics.

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Many critically ill patients are unable to make medical decisions for themselves. Family members or close friends are often asked to serve as surrogate decision makers. However, expectations about a patient's overall prognosis sometimes differ between physicians and surrogate decision makers.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh enrolled 99 physicians and 229 surrogates who made decisions for 174 critically ill patients in a new study. They found that in about half of the cases, surrogates were substantially more optimistic about a patient's prognosis compared to physicians and that the physician's estimates were much more accurate than that of surrogates.

[Watch more videos of The JAMA Report]

Trauma care is one of the most complex health system infrastructures in the US. Depending on the type of injury sustained, a patient may require multidisciplinary intervention from any and/or every medical and surgical specialty, as well as all branches of allied health professionals, at a moment's notice. Given these requirements, the notion to physically move an entire trauma care center, from its staff and patient populations to its equipment, records, and maintenence operations, is a daunting challenge. At Penn Medicine, this monumental task was recently undertaken and completed successfully. Leading the effort was Garry L. Scheib, Chief Operating Officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and Executive Director of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He joins host Frank Russomano to reflect on lessons learned from overseeing one of the biggest trauma care transition projects in American history.

The Gender, Sexuality and HIV Prevention Center at Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago is the first of its kind facilty for adolescent patients.  Host Dr. Jennifer Caudle welcoms the center's director, Dr. Robert Garofalo. Dr. Garofalo will share the center's mission of supporting multidisciplinary academic subjects including sexual health, gender, sexuality, HIV prevention and health disparities which affect adolescent and young adult populations at risk of acquiring HIV. The Center partners with similar organizations throughout the country in creating an environment where clinicians, academics and scientists can collaborate to design projects with public health significance.

Robert Garofalo, MD, MPH, is Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is also an Attending Physician at Lurie Children's, where he directs the Adolescent/Young Adult HIV Program. Dr. Garofalo is a national authority on LGBT health issues, adolescent sexuality, and HIV clinical care and prevention.

This week, Mark and Margaret speak with Dr. Deane Marchbein, President of the American Board of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). Dr. Marchbein joined MSF in 2006 to work as an anesthesiologist in MSF's surgical program in Ivory Coast. She has worked with MSF in Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Syria, and as a medical doctor in Libya and Lebanon.

A New Orleans hospital, after Hurricane Katrina, was surrounded on all sides by several feet of water. The power was out, and as time went on without restoration of basic operations, rumors began circulating of the hospital being overrun by looters. It was a period of total chaos with breakdowns in institutional leadership, compromises in patient care, and in some cases, clinical decisions with deadly consequences. Dr. Sheri Fink, author of Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, takes us on a tour of the aftermath of these events, and the public outcries that both villified and defended the healthcare workers involved.

Click here for Part 1 of this fascinating two-part exploration of the disaster, a hospital's response, and the repercussions that have rippled through its affected staff, patients, and families years later.

In her book, Five Days at Memorial, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos. Drawing from a culmination of six years of reporting, Dr. Fink unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing listeners into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

Click here for Part 2 of this fascinating two-part exploration of the disaster, a hospital's response, and the repercussions that have rippled through its affected staff, patients, and families years later.

Dr. Maurice Pickard welcomes author Scott McGaugh to discuss the subject of his book "Surgeon in Blue: Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care." Through their discussion, listeners will discover how one lone surgeon, Jonathan Letterman, reshaped military medicine over the course of four major Civil War battles and a single year. Letterman, confronted by thousands of wounded lying abandoned on the battlefield, a sickly and malnourished Union army, and obscenely filthy military camps, took steps that make battlefield survival possible for our soldiers today.

Matthew Miller had just pedaled up a mountain pass. He was 20, a member of the University of Virginia triathlon club, so fit his resting pulse was 42! He was on top of the world in so many ways, in love, with dreams of attending medical school. And then, cycling along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, tragedy struck. The real story is not what happened, but what happened after.

Host Dr. John Russell is joined by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Vitez to share the humbling story of Matt's survival and recovery. The author first chronicled Matt Miller's story for his newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer. The response from readers was so overwhelming - and Matt's continued recovery so remarkable - that Vitez immersed himself in Matt's world. The Road Back is not only about a young man's drive to reclaim his life, but about the people who rode with him, rescued him, helped him heal, and saw up close his amazing comeback.

Presenting this session of Grand Rounds is Dr. Gordon Ewy, professor and chief of cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

To view the complete video recording of this and other Grand Rounds sessions from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, visit their website.

Presenting this session of Grand Rounds is Dr. Gordon Ewy, professor and chief of cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

To view the complete video recording of this and other Grand Rounds sessions from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, visit their website.

Presenting this session of Grand Rounds is Dr. Gordon Ewy, professor and chief of cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

To view the complete video recording of this and other Grand Rounds sessions from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, visit their website.

Presenting this session of Grand Rounds is Dr. Leslie Boyer, founding director of the VIPER Institute in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona.

This is Part 3 of a lecture in three parts.

Part 1 >>

Part 2 >>

To view the complete video recording of this and other Grand Rounds sessions from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, visit their website.

Presenting this session of Grand Rounds is Dr. Leslie Boyer, founding director of the VIPER Institute in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona.

This is Part 2 of a lecture in three parts.

Part 1 >>

Part 3 >>

To view the complete video recording of this and other Grand Rounds sessions from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, visit their website.

Presenting this session of Grand Rounds is Dr. Leslie Boyer, founding director of the VIPER Institute in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona.

This is Part 1 of a lecture in three parts.

Part 2 >>

Part 3 >>

To view the complete video recording of this and other Grand Rounds sessions from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, visit their website.

Transplantation offers patients a new lease on life, but the process of waiting before and recovering after a transplant can take their toll. Host Dr. Aaron Carroll is joined by Dr. Patricia Scott, who studies occupational role transitions throughout the liver transplantation process at Indiana University, to discusses the challenges patients face and their quality of life before and after transplantation. Dr. Scott also talks about how healthcare providers can help foster a better quality of life for patients surrounding transplantation.

Time is of the essence after cardiac arrest; action must be taken within five minutes. Survival rates for patients who arrest outside the hospital are disappointing. How do we help patients who arrest in public or (statistically more likely) in the home, where there is no access to medical equipment and medication? Host Dr. Janet Wright talks with Dr. Peter Nagele, chief of the section of trauma anesthesiology in the department of anesthesiology at Washington University in St. Louis, about revised CPR methods without mouth-to-mouth, and what recent research tells us about the potential for these methods to improve outcomes. And what are plans for training the general public?