Transitions in Care

Excerpt

I arrive at the hospital in the early morning and soon afterward my colleague hands me two sheets of crisp white paper listing her patients. After her long night on-call, she is ready to relinquish her patients to my care. I spend a few minutes with her, scanning this index of unfamiliar names while she emphasizes details relating to her sickest patients. Alongside the rows of names are tidy “to do” and “to know” columns where personal details, critical test results and response plans for worst case scenarios have been reduced to acronyms and abbreviations. I’m convinced that these two impersonal pages contain all I will need to know to care for these patients over the grueling shift ahead—responses for every contingency. …