Saving the World, or Saving One Life at a Time?

Saving the World, or Saving One Life at a Time? Lessons my Career with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders/MSF has Taught Me

It is a double honor to address you today. First, this is because my team and I are aware of, and grateful for the significant contributions that student and faculty members of the University of Pennsylvania’s academic community have made, and are making to the advancement of global health and medicine. We feel fortunate that Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has attracted ...

Saving the NHS one blood test at a time

As a team of junior doctors our aim has been to save costs in day to day work so that money can be reallocated to improving nursing staff levels on our wards. Stem cell units have regular blood collection schedules in order to monitor organ response to chemotherapy and to look for complications in immunocompromised patients. We set out to reduce the number of biochemical investigations to a min...

Tracheal intubation in the ICU: Life saving or life threatening?

Tracheal intubation (TI) is a routine procedure in the intensive care unit (ICU), and is often life saving. However, life-threatening complications occur in a significant proportion of procedures, making TI perhaps one the most common but underappreciated airway emergencies in the ICU. In contrast to the controlled conditions in the operating room (OR), the unstable physiologic state of critica...

Life-saving or life-threatening? Prehospital thoracostomy for thoracic trauma.

A bus was involved in a roll-over road traffic accident. Most occupants were ejected from the vehicle. Primary triage revealed 9 dead, 1 P4 (unsalvageable), 5 P1 (immediate life threat) and 30 less severely injured patients. Two prehospital doctors performed a secondary triage, provided medical supervision and performed critical care interventions where necessary. A young man initially triaged ...

Life-saving and life-taking: a comment.