Calm under pressure – Why I walk to emergencies

November 12, 2018

As an emergency physician, I often hear people say to me, “It must be crazy dealing with emergencies all of the time,” or “you must be calm in stressful situations.” To be honest, I don’t find the emergency department or my job to be crazy or all that stressful on a patient to patient basis. Most of what we do is diagnose a problem, stabilize, and get the patient the proper resources, whether that be admission or discharge with followup. For me, the stress is not necessarily the emergencies we take care of, but the sheer volume of patients we see. However, we prepare for years to handle these emergencies and this preparation pays off when we become attending physicians.

Walk, Don’t Run

This brings me to the other question people ask me. “Why do emergency trained healthcare providers walk to an emergency instead of run?” It seems that running would show urgency to help someone and perhaps get you there a wee bit faster. Perhaps the answer is the years of preparation or perhaps personality, but I think the following 2 stories best explain the reasons.

2 stories that exemplify why walking calmly is ALWAYS best.

Story 1

When I was a 3rd year medical student and doing an ICU rotation, the alarms began ringing and the next thing we knew, “Code Blue” was called to the room about 30 feet from where I was standing. Immediately a nurse got a panicked look in her face and started to run toward the room. Unfortunately the floor had just been mopped. She slipped, fell, and ended up in the ER with a nasal bone fracture. Unfortunately, she never made it to the room.

Story 2

While standing with one of my attending physicians (who I highly admired) in the ER while in residency, a patient arrived in cardiac arrest. I began to walk to the room, but the physician grabbed me and told me to hold for a minute. He took me aside, created a plan with me regarding how we would run the arrest, had me take a deep breath, as did he, and then calmly slipped into the room where the hustle and bustle of life-saving techniques created a semi-chaotic scene. Somehow, as soon as he entered, everything seemed to quiet and become organized. He took over the resuscitation, and it may have been the smoothest arrest I have ever been a part of.

And the point is…

The point of these two stories is that being calm and prepared provides the best care we can give to our patients, hands down. There is no better way to be fully engaged and use your knowledge to the best of your ability than to be calm, collected, and prepared. Others involved in the emergency will follow suit, no one will get hurt, and to be honest, the one minute extra it takes to get to the emergency and mentally prepare will not be the difference for the patient.