072 - Blackout in the ICU - A Crazy Medical Story for Physicians Looking to Decrease Stress & Burnout In Medical Practice

Ever faced a hospital blackout mid-shift? Ever bagged ventilated patients in pitch darkness? Tune in as Coach JPMD recounts a wild ICU power outage that will leave you clutching your stethoscope!

In this episode of the Independent Physician’s Blueprint Podcast, join Coach JPMD,  as he dives into a heart-pounding tale from his residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Discover the crucial importance of having a solid backup plan in medical practice.

Learn how to navigate chaotic situations like a pro, reduce medical practice burnout, and enhance patient satisfaction. Coach JPMD shares valuable insights on maintaining calm under pressure, the significance of backup systems, and leadership lessons that every young physician and junior doctor should master.

Ready to transform your medical practice journey? Hit that follow button and never miss an episode! Tune in every Monday for crazy medical stories and every Thursday for career-boosting insights or guest interviews. Don't miss out – your journey to independent practice, decreased stress, and wealth generation starts here!

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.098)
Welcome to another crazy medical story where at end of this story, you're going to hear why I think everyone should have a backup plan for things that they do and things that happen in hospitals. Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. Have you ever had a blackout or power outage in the hospital? must've been a second or third year resident at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Internal Medicine resident in the ICU. I wish I could remember the residents that were with me at the time, but it was early evening and I was rounding, making my rounds and checking on patients when a power outage hit the hospital. Well, that wouldn't have been a big deal, but the problem was that the power outage happened. We saw the lights go out and none of the equipment.

continued to work. The ventilators stopped working. The IV pumps started to beep and there was no electricity. And I thought it would be temporary. you know, we kind of looked over the patients and realized after about a couple of minutes, there was no electricity in the ICU.

and we were freaking out. Now, we called maintenance, we called supervisors, and they said we need to use the red plugs in the outlets in the walls. And apparently the red outlets are connected to the backup emergency power system. And the red sockets didn't work. So I immediately got into, I don't know what type of mode, but as one of the senior residents in the ICU, I...

basically direct to the nurses to disconnect patients from the ventilators and start bagging them.

Coach JPMD (01:53.684)
So we had nurses bagging patients in a downtown Miami emergency room because there was no electricity in the ICU. IV machines actually started, continued working for as long as I remember because some of them and most of them had backup batteries. But then after a couple of minutes, I thought, hold up, we have a patient on a high frequency jet ventilator and

you know, residents might not know.

what that is, but the high frequency jet ventilator were for ARDS patients who we couldn't oxygenate using regular ventilators and we'd have to bag those patients also, but we knew that if we disconnected those patients from, or that one patient that we had on the jet ventilator, it'd probably die because we would not be able to sustain the pressures that that ventilator would generate.

using an IV, using an ambu bag. And so we ran up to that bed, and it was still working. So come to find out that that ventilator that high frequency jet ventilator had its own battery backup system, and was continuing to work. This blackout lasted probably about 30 minutes. I can't remember the exact timeframe. But I remember just freaking out in the ICU with 1820 patients.

with nurses bagging ventilated patients. And it was a scene. It was a scene almost like a scene in a movie. The moral of the story is that stressful situations can come in many flavors. I once read a book called Rare Leadership. And one of the traits of a good leader is that they embrace hardship. So I definitely embraced that hardship and we survived that ICU blackout and

Coach JPMD (03:51.294)
I say have a backup plan. Everyone who knows me always knows that I always have a plan B, plan C for things that happen in life. And that's definitely something that helped decrease my stress in practice. The second thing is we need to be thankful for what we have, especially in the United States where we have electricity every day. We have things that have battery backups.

I grew up in Haiti where this was not the norm. So I was definitely grateful that we had battery backups on the ventilators and that we have electricity every day. So that's the crazy Monday story of the day. Do you want to hear more crazy stories like this? Don't forget to follow this podcast on your favorite app so you can get an alert when new episodes are released. Thanks for listening and tune in next week for another crazy medical story.