Real Time in the ER

What David Peterson loves about his job is exactly what many people would hate about it: “I love the fast and furious pace, the thinking on your feet,” he says. “And it doesn’t bother me to stay up all night.”

When we talked with Peterson, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Abbott Northwestern Hospital—at 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday—he had been working since 7 a.m. and hadn’t had time for even a cup of coffee. “And that’s not unusual,” says Peterson, a graduate of the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, who did his residency at Abbott Northwestern.

Peterson uses his large stores of energy to diagnose, stabilize, treat, and admit or discharge patients with everything from chest pain to a broken bone. Thirty percent of patients admitted to Abbott Northwestern come in through the emergency department door.

According to Peterson, one misconception about working in an emergency department is that it’s like on television. “On TV, there’s a lot of drama and there’s a lot of personal strife,” he says. “And that’s not at all the case here. We’re busy all the time; there’s no time to sit down in the cafeteria and have a discussion.”

Peterson says the emergency department would not be as busy if bicyclists and motorcyclists wore helmets, auto drivers and passengers buckled their seat belts, everyone got flu shots, and rollerbladers wore protection on their hands, wrists and elbows. Fortunately for those who don’t, Peterson is there to try to put them back together again.

The most rewarding element of his job, he says, is the ability to make someone’s day better, like the woman with a dislocated shoulder he had seen earlier in the day. “She said, ‘Thank you. That was about the best experience I’ve had with a lousy experience.’ ”