Defensive Medicine

When most people think of defensive medicine, they think of the emergency physician ordering unnecessary tests to protect himself from legal action in the future. But yesterday on call, I learned a new type of defensive medicine. The resident heard about a patient with sepsis in the emergency department who was likely to come either to us in the intensive care unit or to the step-down unit. He proactively went to see the patient in the emergency department and felt that the patient would do fine in the step-down unit. But doing "defensive medicine," he helped the admitting team and the emergency department expedite procedures and therapies. It was better for the patient, and it was better for us to get involved sooner rather than later.