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Open Access 01-12-2020 | Care | Editorial

Getting out of the 1950s: rethinking old priorities for staffing in critical care

Author: Hannah Wunsch

Published in: Critical Care | Issue 1/2020

Excerpt

Medicine as we practice it is shaped by routines from decades ago; the attending physician on morning rounds, trailed by nurses, residents, and medical students. In those earlier days, there was little that could be done for someone who was struggling to breathe except perhaps get a chest x-ray and give them oxygen. Heart attacks in the 1950s were treated with bedrest [1], and a description by an intern in 1951 describes routinely finding cardiology patients dead in the morning when coming to draw blood [2]. …

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Gershengorn HB, Pilcher DV, Litton E, Anstey M, Garland A, Wunsch H. Association between consecutive days worked by intensivists and outcomes for critically ill patients. Crit Care Med. 2020;48(4):594–8.CrossRef

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Title: Getting out of the 1950s: rethinking old priorities for staffing in critical care
Author: Hannah Wunsch
Publication date: 01-12-2020
Publisher: BioMed Central
Keywords: Care
Burnout Syndrome
Published in: Critical Care / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 1364-8535
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-020-03426-z

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