My First Patient

Today was the first day I made a decision about a patient's care. It led to an order which was immediately followed. The feelings contrast with any I have felt from designing a sweet experiment or ordering a killer reagent or performing a life-or-death procedure on mice or reviewing a top-secret manuscript. There is something different about decisions made in the hospital. Maybe this same course of action three weeks from now wouldn't even release a single endorphin. For that reason, I write it here:

• A lab result came back that was 'good news.'
  
• Based on that finding, I decided to remove the patient from isolation.
• We switched a drug's administration from intravenous to oral and decreased the dose.

Pretty exciting, huh? Well it was for me. And for the patient. She had been dying to go out to the common area to get a popsicle.