Life and Death and Devices: Lessons from the Creation of a Critical Care Physician
DR. JORDAN BONOMO
This presentation will briefly describe the training of a modern "resuscitationist” and emergency physician through the indelible lessons taught in residency and fellowship. From the perspective of medical devices we call upon daily, we’ll follow a critically injured patient through the pre-hospital helicopter EMS environment, the Emergency Department, the unique care received in the OR and ICU and ultimately organ donation. This journey will focus on the vast arsenal of equipment involved in critical care and resuscitation and the challenges clinicians face daily in providing high-level, high-stakes critical and resuscitative care. This journey includes mindful debate of the cost of medicine and the failings of ultra-early prognostication. We will touch on newly developed strategies of using advanced resuscitation devices to increase organ donation and the future of the interface between devices and the ethics of dying (and living) in the modern world of ultra high-speed medicine.