Hyperbaric Provider

Welcome to the wild world of me writing down my thoughts! Buckle up! Not much new to report here today. This is the last week of my full month on service and just finishing up some of the tasks for the month is making me tend towards reflection on the month which is always good. I discussed the podcast yesterday and I am still pumped up about that. Tomorrow is the hospital medicine mystery case of the week. Then Friday, my colleague who I run that with, and I are going to go encourage PA students to come to the event every Wednesday afternoon. The PA students are my favorite group on campus to do improv workshops with, so I am excited for some PA’s to join my other main academic activity

As I have mentioned, I am on service for the whole month of April (and one day of May, but who is counting). Especially when I am on service for a full month, I enjoy taking my team of residents and students on “Field Trips”. This is where we go talk to another type of doctor in regards to one of our patients as a gateway, but more of an excuse to learn more about what they do and understand their perspectives. The usual trips include to Pathology to talk about biopsy results, to Radiology to talk more about how they interpret imaging studies like CT scans or X rays, or to Microbiology to talk about the organisms that are growing inside of patients. Today’s Field Trip was to Hyperbaric Oxygen. They were kind enough to share some ideas to help a patient that we were seeing and explain the pathophysiology behind how hyperbaric oxygen’s benefits. Let’s see how closely I was paying attention, but briefly, the patients go into a chamber and the pressure is increased so there is greater diffusion of oxygen into your system. Normally oxygen is carried around in your blood stream by your hemoglobin on your red blood cells, but those can be saturated enough but still not reach a part of the body that needs more oxygen to heal. When the pressure of oxygen is increased the oxygen gets on all the red blood cells and is carried around in the serum as well. So, if there is an area that has the vessels narrowed or red blood cells are not able to pass through, but some fluid can get through, the oxygen can now get to the affected area. There are people on the internet who think this will lead to immortal life if done regularly. There are some miracle stories out there of it saving people’s lives. There are several patients who would verifiably benefit from this therapy who don’t get it, even in a hospital system that has access to it. It is an interesting area for future research by somebody who understands it better than I just explained

This reminded me of improv helping with my communication with patients. Prior to improv, my communication was just fine when the usual things were happening. If I was having difficulty connecting with a patient, the thousands of other great encounters I have had made me think that it was something about the patient that was preventing me from connecting. As hyperbaric therapy increases the pressure of what is needed to heal, improv has increased my awareness of communication and has allowed me to connect with people and situations with whom I previously was unable to connect. This connection is what is needed to help heal those with unseen wounds. A computer can give my patients information, and some are starting to diagnose patients with conditions. A sense of connection is what I must bring to my patients. I must be a hyperbaric provider. Many times, patients are not able to receive the medical knowledge, sense of care, and love, which prevents healing. The tools of improv are the same tools I can use to deliver them to my patients.

PS. Watson failed out of school so looks like we won’t be replaced by machines on this timeline