Awake and Informed

Abstract

I grew up with the one-doctor–one-patient paradigm. When I admitted a patient, I took the case as my personal responsibility. I did my best to get to know the patient and his or her family, the medical problem at hand, and the best way to approach it. If this meant working without sleep, so be it — the patient came first. As my practice migrated more toward intensive care medicine, in which the approach to care is more team oriented, I retained a vestige of the old habits. Try as I might not to do so, I put more into . . .