[Spoiler Alert for Season One of the Pitt ahead]
I know many of you will see yourself in Dr. Samira Mohan’s character, senior emergency resident and empath.
At the start of the season, Samira is nicknamed “Slow Mo” since she likes to take her time with each patient. Robby keeps reminding her that she needs to go faster, that the waiting room is blooming, and that she can’t treat each person like a VIP!
Run harder and make the hamster wheel twirl faster and faster!
This is the emerg department! You don’t have time to chat (even if that means you pick up the occasional heavy metal poisoning case posing as first presentation schizophrenia…just saying)!
Emerg docs will always be measured on speed. I don’t think that will ever change. I get it. Hospital funding is largely incentivized on patient throughput and the time it takes to see and churn over patients.
As emergency doctors, we don’t get rewarded for having great bedside manner, positive team morale, or low burnout rates. Patient throughput gets attention (read money).
But balanced with speed, there is also patient satisfaction, patient safety, and the wise use of resources and consultations to consider. Add in a lawsuit for a missed aortic dissection, and you’ve got the equation for why emergency doctors have a short half-life.
Go fast, but don’t miss anything!
See one more, but leave on time!
Be thorough, but don’t blame anyone else if you don’t eat and take a break.
If you make a mistake and miss something, let’s make it an M and M rounds so we can all ask why you didn’t do XYZ…
Samira Mohan knows that there is value in approaching each patient at a slower pace and being curious even when that behaviour is not generally rewarded in emergency medicine.
A patient who could be labelled as “drug seeking” may actually be experiencing a sickle cell crisis! A patient with opioid withdrawal may benefit from hearing options on harm reduction.
These discoveries all take time.
And so she’s labelled Dr. “Slow-Mo” Mohan.
What’s interesting is that while Trinity Santos evolves in the show to show more vulnerability and humility, Samira Mohan’s character speeds up when the department handles a tragic mass casualty event. She even uses an EZ-IO to do a burr hole!
What?! Did I miss that in Rosen’s?
And it’s only then that Robby acknowledges that “she is on fire” and he finally appreciates her medical experience and smarts. Once the mass casualty is officially over and her shift is done, Samira “on fire” doesn’t even want to leave. She wants to stay and see more interesting cases. She wants to burn through…
Has she become more like Robby? And is that a good or bad thing?
Question: “When have you valued something that was not considered valuable to others?”
