Walking out of the ICU: Dr. X, Patient Safety, and the Battle Between Coronavirus Common Sense and the Hospital Bottom Line

As American hospitals struggle to admit waves of coughing, feverish patients to medical wards and intensive care units, physicians are finding themselves at war with the competing interests of other hospital employees. Early in the American days of the COVID-19 pandemic, one critical care physician resigned her position due to the unsafe practices she felt were endangering her patients and her staff. She feels she must remain anonymous, given the notorious cancel culture within medicine.

She had started the job only recently, a prestigious academic position. She was doubly trained, as an anesthesiologist and as an intensivist — an ICU specialist.

In other words, she is very good at keeping people alive, which she had been doing half-time in the operating room, watching vital signs like a hawk while surgeons operated, and half-time in the ICU, curing bad pneumonias and helping people with brand-new hearts live.

The job ruffled her sense of right and wrong from the beginning. Instead of adjusting protocols for patient care for ventricular assist device or transplant patients to reflect new journal articles and the latest scientific evidence, she heard a lot of “We’ve always done it this…