Burned Out (eBook)

Dean Mafako M.D. (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
526 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-7921-5 (ISBN)

Infos

One physician will trade everything to improve the care at a children's hospital. Will he succeed before it destroys his own life and well-being?

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Eric Philson came to the Children's Hospital of Biloxi with a goal - to build the cardiac intensive care unit from the ground up. The physician faces insurmountable odds: the devastating aftereffects of a hurricane, deprivation of essential staff and resources, and a cardiac surgeon resistant to change. Dr. Philson will do whatever it takes to help improve the care for children, until the job begins to take a toll on his free time, marriage, and health. How much is he willing to sacrifice? Working hundred-hour weeks, overcoming the impossible, and facing personal ruin are only the start of what he will face. Does he have the grit and determination to do what's right, even if it costs him everything?

Textauszug

1

The Beginning of the End

“What’s the fucking ACT?” Dr. Porter yelled as he stormed into room 3 of the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Biloxi.

“The ACT is 140, sir!” replied the perfusionist managing the ECMO circuit.

“I told you I wanted the ACT to be 160–180. Why isn’t it 160–180?”

“Well, sir, we are getting some conflicting orders regarding the ACT goal. Due to the massive amount of bleeding from the chest tubes, we had been told that we were not adjusting the heparin infusion based on ACT,” explained the respiratory therapy supervisor.

“What is your name, son?” Dr. Porter asked rhetorically. As Gary opened his mouth to reply, he was rudely interrupted by the words, “Never mind your name. Who told you to think? I give the orders and you follow them, that’s how this works,” screamed Dr. Porter.

I had just walked through the entryway doors leading to the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit to meet Dr. Slovak, one of my cardiac intensive care colleagues, so that she could provide patient hand off, as I was taking over service responsibilities for the week. We looked at one another as we heard the commotion that appeared to be coming from room 3 of the CICU, so we both rushed down the hall to see what was going on. Astrid and I arrived at the doorway of room 3 to discover a scene best described as a hybrid between a low-budget horror film due to the massive amount of blood hemorrhaging from the patient, and a 1980s human resource video showing an extreme example of workplace violence. Astrid and I looked at one another with shock and disdain as we witnessed Dr. Porter’s tyrannical behavior, his face cherry red, radiating unfathomable rage, in such an uncontrollable manner it screamed pathologic, suggesting a source housed deep within. His surgical mask rested misplaced, exposing his somewhat long, pointed nose with beads of sweat tumbling down until finally reaching the tip and falling to the floor, as if drops of water dripping one at a time from an aged, leaky farmhouse faucet.

“Phil!” I said, attempting to get his attention, but there was no response. “Phil!” I repeated in a much louder voice, again vying to capture his attention and break him from this trance of rage.

The room was comprised of Dr. Porter and his five victims, who believe it or not, also happened to be employees and human beings as verified by human resources, and by anyone with a damn conscience for that matter. Each of these poor souls stared nervously at the floor. Following my second attempt to capture Dr. Porter’s attention, their eyes cautiously shifted upward, just enough to discretely search the room for the source of the voice. However, their heads refused to relinquish their downward gaze, remaining unaltered and motionless as if cemented like a statue. Their eyes resembled those of beaten dogs, once caring, loyal and innocent, but now looked upon me with uncertainty and ambivalence, questioning without saying a word, whether I still maintained a sliver of authority that would allow me to rescue them from the bullying toxicity, which had now become customary and mundane. The seed of mistrust had been planted during Dr. Porter’s previous behavioral outburst as the staff watched the hospital administration ignore their complaint, blatantly refusing to hold him accountable for his despicable and infantile behavior.

“Phil let’s go outside the room and discuss this,” I said a third time, more loudly. Dr. Porter momentarily ceased yelling as he turned toward the sound of my voice, eventually making eye contact with me as he stomped angrily toward the door. As he reached the doorway, we exited the room in unison as he continuously shook his head side to side, muttering to himself like a spoiled toddler who had just been told they cannot have ice cream before finishing their dinner.

Phil Porter was a somewhat legendary physician in the field of pediatric cardiac surgery. He was world-renowned for two major skills, the first of which was his elite technical surgical skill and in particular his ability to operate with great precision on even the tiniest of babies with complex congenital heart defects. Prior to joining the team as the chief of congenital heart surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Biloxi, he held the prestigious position of chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania for nearly a decade. Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania was long recognized as one of the preeminent congenital heart programs in the world. Since his departure, Phil had held two other chief positions, both of which were short-lived. His most recent position lasted two years, while his leadership position prior to that lasted an astonishing two months before he was asked to leave. Which leads us to the second skill that Phil Porter was nationally renowned for, BEING A WORLD-CLASS ASSHOLE! Previous staff and colleagues were quick to share that after a decade of his shenanigans in Pennsylvania, he was asked to leave, and speak to this day of the glorious celebration that occurred upon his departure. While Dr. Porter claimed his voluntary departure, it was said that if he stayed much longer, the choice would no longer have been his to make.

Dr. Porter had left Pennsylvania to assume the role as the chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at the University of Idaho, which was respected as a small-to-medium-sized congenital heart program with a solid reputation for good clinical outcomes. Dr. Porter lasted a whopping two months before he was asked to leave. Perhaps asked is the wrong word, more accurately, he was told to leave. As in, immediately! Beyond his notorious reputation as a bully and a toxic leader, he was specifically known to despise and torture pediatric cardiac intensive care unit staff and most infamously, the cardiac intensive care physicians (aka cardiac intensivists). When he arrived in Idaho, the culture deteriorated so quickly and the cardiac intensivists were treated so poorly, that they took a stand and said either Phil Porter goes or all six of us go. So, the hospital played the smart odds and asked him to leave. Dr. Porter was clearly an intelligent physician, but he was also an exceptionally skilled sociopath, who knew he was on the cusp of being terminated in Pennsylvania; however, the University of Idaho, who was to become his new employer, did not. Dr. Porter had little faith in his ability to control his behavior issues, or at least he had no interest in doing so, and being the master manipulator he was, he negotiated his contract with the University of Idaho to state that in the event that his employment was terminated, he would be compensated for the entirety of the multi-year contract he had negotiated. In his mind, this allowed him free rein to act as he pleased, unopposed. Such opportunism would become an important factor leading up to his next employment opportunity and more importantly it would have implications pertaining to his negotiated employment agreement at Children’s Hospital of Biloxi.

Following his brief, two-month stint in Idaho, he found employment at North Dakota Health, a large hospital system that consisted of a pediatric wing, housed within the adult hospital. They had a thriving adult cardiac program with a successful cardiac transplant program and had shown significant interest in developing a pediatric congenital heart program for some time. They saw the hiring of Dr. Porter as a no-lose situation. They had struggled mightily for years to find a congenital heart surgeon to begin building their program. The state already had another congenital heart program that was successful, which only added to their difficulty in recruiting. In this scenario North Dakota Health was aware of his behavior issues in Idaho and was cognizant of the payout he received for his multi-year contract after only two months of employment. Therefore, they used the money Phil was paid from his short stint in Idaho to subsidize a much lower salary offer. So, for them, it truly appeared to be a no-lose situation as they not only scored the pediatric cardiac surgeon they had so desperately sought, but one with a nationally recognized name, and for dirt cheap! Win-win, right? Well, Phil lasted two years in North Dakota before leaving on his own terms, or as was suggested by colleagues and staff once again, if he didn’t leave it would no longer have been on his own terms. During his two years in North Dakota, he accumulated several staff complaints related to his bullying and abusive behavior, one of which involved shoving a nurse.

Dr. Porter was also known as a risk taker when it came to congenital heart surgery, which means that he was willing to operate on babies who have such severe heart disease that they are deemed inoperable by most institutions because their disease is so severe that they are unlikely to survive surgery and instead will endure substantial suffering. Taking such risk, which leads to an almost certain mortality at a program such as Children Hospital of Pennsylvania, which performs approximately one thousand cardiac operations annually, will have minimal impact on the overall mortality rate of the program, due to the large number of overall cases they perform. However, taking such risk in North Dakota, with an annual cardiac surgical volume of perhaps two hundred cases, where the program is new and working to build its prominence in the community, two to three mortalities involving complex cases can have irreversible repercussions on the program’s reputation. Well, the CEO in North Dakota began to sour on Dr. Porter when his mortality rate began to surpass the number of complaints received by...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.1.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-7921-9 / 1667879219
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-7921-5 / 9781667879215