‘We Feel Like We’re Drowning’: What We Heard This Week

“From the human side of it, we feel like we’re drowning.” — Marco Fernandez, MD, president of Midwest Anesthesia Partners in Illinois, on the fallout from the corporatization of medicine.

“I’ve been in situations where I know if I had fewer patients, I might have been able to save a patient’s life.” — Nancy Hagans, RN, president of National Nurses United and of the New York State Nurses Association, discussing nurse understaffing.

“The reality is, we just don’t know where the beginning is.” — John Corboy, MD, of the University of Colorado in Aurora, discussing the conundrum of finding what appear to be multiple sclerosis lesions on an MRI.

“It kind of simplifies and reduces the complexity of determining eligibility.” — Sara Ghandehari, MD, of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, discussing new lung cancer screening guidance from the American Cancer Society.

“The risk is theoretical.” — Tabassum Ahsan, PhD, of City of Hope in California, discussing the risk of off-target gene editing with the investigational agent exagamglogene autotemcel (exa-cel) for sickle cell disease.

“We aren’t going to fix this problem by noting that canaries are dying in the coal mine and … sending out for tougher canaries.” — Gary Price, MD, of Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, reviewing survey data that showed most medical and nursing students said they don’t plan to treat patients.

“It’s all based on available community resources.” — Christine Crawford, MD, MPH, a psychiatrist at Boston University, on possible reasons behind low use of the 988 suicide hotline.