New AHA president leads with a cardinal rule: Put the patient first
Black Owned Newspapers And Blogsby Toter 4 months ago 34 Views 0 comments
Dr. Keith Churchwell was enjoying Christmas Day 1991 at home with his wife when their phone rang. He was needed at the hospital.
As the chief resident for Grady Memorial Hospital, one of four hospitals in the Emory University system in Atlanta, Churchwell oversaw about 160 early-career doctors, including the caller — an anesthesiology intern who’d made a mistake.
The intern (or, first-year resident) had stuck himself with a needle contaminated with the blood of an HIV-positive patient. At that time, most people who became HIV-positive developed life-threatening infections and cancers.
Churchwell was 30, a few years ahead of the intern, yet also still at the outset of his career. Nothing in his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, medical school at Washington University or his residency at Emory prepared him for such a predicament.
However, growing up as the youngest child of Robert and Mary Churchwell had.
Churchwell went to the hospital, consoled the intern and arranged for medical and emotional support from the human resources team. Then he turned his attention to the rest of the intern’s shift. As the boss, Churchwell could’ve called in another intern. Instead, he handled it himself, visiting 20 patients and performing two spinal...
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