All in a Day’s Work in Brazil
Summary by: Flavia Machado
As many other emerging countries, Brazil has two completely different healthcare systems, a private system restricted to those who are insured and a public system free-of-charge available for everyone. As anywhere, there are lots of boring things in our daily routine. Some of them will piss you off regardless if you are working for a very nice private ICU or for an overcrowded public one. Deal with the assistant physicians, with our own colleagues and other healthcare professionals is not exactly easy and fun. Can you imagine something more repetitive than a checklist? However, some will be different. To decide who will get the last free bed? Put a patient in ECMO knowing how much it will cost? Having a fight after finally finding our ward colleagues to get a patient discharged? To discharge a patient knowing that he will come back because we don’t have step-down units? Yes, that is sometimes just too much! And this just all in a day’s work in a public ICU in Brazil.
