A Woman's Despair...

Dr Zaroff recalls one of her earliest experiences in clinical medicine...the emergency room at Mt Sinai hospital in 1956.

The same year Don Larsen pitched a perfect game to propel the NY Yankees to their 17th World Series win, and Dr Sheldon Jacobson started his first year as Chairman of the EM program at Sinai. (kidding)

The article captures the calmness of the experienced emergency personnel, the insecurity of the intern, and most of all the tragedy of the patient - who presented to the ER after jumping out of her psychiatrists window.

This seems like a good reason to keep psychiatric wards and offices on the ground floor. Here is an excerpt:

...The emergency room is a crush of activity — asking, receiving, checking, patients piling up. Its noises are important, compelling. Yet the focus now is on this one woman. The nurses, deliberate as a snowstorm, have seen it all. For them, this is just an iteration. They watch over the tyros: they will allow no serious mistakes.