Love and Mercy in the ICU | Wes Ely, MD

The Doctor's Art

Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson

Medicine, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Philosophy

5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The ICU can be a traumatizing place for patients, who are frequently heavily sedated, rendered unable to speak by breathing tubes, isolated by family visit limitations, and sometimes even physically restrained. In fact, a significant proportion of patients discharged from the ICU later develop persistent cognitive impairments and physical disabilities. Over the past two decades, Wes Ely, MD has worked to improve the care of patients in the ICU, leading landmark studies resulting in the d...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Henry Bear.
0:03.0	And I'm Tyler Johnson.
0:05.0	And you're listening to The Doctors Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine.
0:09.0	Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered.
0:13.2	What makes medicine meaningful?
0:15.1	Can a stronger understanding of this meaning
0:17.2	create better doctors?
0:18.8	How can we build health care institutions
0:20.6	that nurture the doctor-patient connection.
0:23.0	What can we learn about the human condition
0:25.0	from accompanying our patients in times of suffering?
0:28.0	In seeking answers to these questions,
0:30.0	we meet with deep thinkers working across health care, from doctors and nurses to patients and health care executives, those who have collected a career's worth of hard-earned wisdom.
0:40.0	Probing the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine, we will hear stories that are by turns heart-breaking, amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening.
0:49.0	We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do.
0:52.8	Join us as we think out loud about what illness and healing can teach us
0:57.1	about some of life's biggest questions. It wasn't long after Dr. West E. Lee became an intensive care physician that he discovered just how traumatizing of a place the ICU can be.
1:11.0	Patients are frequently sedated, drifting in and out of consciousness. They often have
1:16.2	breathing tubes inserted down their airways, rendering them unable to speak. Family
1:21.3	visitation can be limited, leading to a profound sense of isolation.
1:25.0	On top of all this, patients can sometimes even be physically restrained.
1:29.0	It's perhaps not entirely surprising that a significant proportion of patients discharged from the ICU later develop post-traumatic stress disorder with additional symptoms of dementia and persistent physical disabilities.
	...

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