Save of the Month! December 2015

Welcome to Save of the Month! where each month we recognize a resident who went above and beyond to make a great save in the ED. Nominations are solicited from the faculty each block and we pick one resident for recognition and embarrassment on this blog.

This month’s edition goes to . . . Dr. Emad Shabana!

Here’s the story . . .

I would like to nominate Dr. Emad Shabana for Save of the Month.

We had a patient who came with SOB, hypoxemia and hypotension. They were 2 weeks post-op after resection for gastric cancer. Dr. Shabana recognized on initial assessment, before the pt was even on the monitor, that the patient had no breath sounds on the right side and came to me and said he was concerned about a tension pneumothorax. He ended up doing needle decompression and then did an excellent job of walking the intern through the chest tube.

I think his recognition of a life-threatening diagnosis was obviously important but more importantly he recognized it early due to sticking to the ABCs. His supervision of the junior during the procedure was exemplary.