132 | Surviving the ER Without Losing Yourself — Dr. Julie on Burnout, Purpose and How we interact with EMS

Mindsets to avoid burnout – Julie humanizes the patient and understands that whatever difficult things we are dealing with are temporary and have gratitude

We must constantly recognize possible anchor bias and avoid cynicism to appropriately treat our patients

We talk about our interactions with EMS

Both Julie and I remember working in EMS and the value that EMS brings in their report because they often see a lot of things we don’t get from the history of the patient

Julies advice for the new APP/ER doc - don’t come to premature closure on a diagnosis, don’t be afraid to ask questions, pay off your loans over buying the biggest house and latest toys

We talk about the baseline level of stress we deal with 

We talk about technological changes over time and imaging improvements

She talks about the challenges that the Covid pandemic presented and the shortages of different things we have now encountered

Julie still finds meaning in finding the hard differential diagnosis and working towards positive patient interactions, the teamwork in the ER

I talk about the importance of creating an approachable affect so everyone feels free to voice concerns

Go look at the patient when the nurse is concerned 

Julie talks about the benefit for new EMT’s and paramedics to reach out and ask for feedback and follow up on their patients, often we don’t have time to pull them aside

EMS doesn’t have the best mechanisms in place for good feedback on every case like we do in the ER, where we see in real time how accurate our assessment may have been when the work up comes back