Maire Daugharty

“The Retrievals” is a podcast series hosted and written by Susan Burton and presented in cooperation with the New York Times that focuses on the failure of a Yale fertility clinic to address uncontrolled pain during procedures. As it turns out this was the result of a nurse surreptitiously replacing the pain medication fentanyl with saline to support her addiction. This apparently unfolded over the course of a year or years and involved not just a few patients but perhaps hundreds.

The brain is a pattern-seeking organ that continually organizes the world into a more predictable experience. Our first predictions arise out of early childhood and are predicated on messaging from primary caregivers. These are deeply buried in implicit memory meaning that much of what we anticipate from interactions lies outside of our awareness. Over the course of a lifetime, these guiding assumptions working in the background are continuously modified in relationship.

Locums can be a very challenging space, at least for anesthesiologists. Environments are frequently disrupted. There is often animosity between clinicians coping long-term with turmoil and inadequate staffing, and the temporary locums who fill a gap and are often paid substantially more for their intrusion. In anesthesia, the quality of the relationship between clinician and the total environment is essential.