On being an intensivist

Excerpt

What is it that motivates those who practice acute care medicine to want to do so in the intensive care unit, a place most other doctors and nurses tend to avoid out of fear and trepidation? Is it the challenge of confronting complex pathophysiological processes head on using diagnostic and therapeutic options not readably available in the rest of the hospital? Is it the feeling of fulfillment when one can be a significant part of one human’s life during a very delicate balance between life and death? I have thought of these questions many times before. In fact, as a boy I wrote the following poem to address my quandary in considering going into medicine as a profession: …