It’s pretty hard to shock an emergency physician. “We see the worst of the worst, and the silliest of the silliest,” Abdullah Pratt, an emergency medicine physician at the University of Chicago Medicine, told me recently.
I was chatting with him about the situations he’d witnessed in the E.R., specifically the ones that made him change his own behavior. To start, he told me, he would never wear Crocs when it’s snowy or icy outside.
I sheepishly confessed that, just the night before, I’d slipped on a pair and traversed my frozen driveway to take out the trash.
“No way,” Dr. Pratt said. “Please don’t tell me you broke your ankle.”
In winter, he sees “Croc-specific injuries” once a week. The shoes “don’t provide traction, and they don’t provide any ankle support,” he said. “People go flying, and so do their Crocs.”
Dr. Pratt isn’t willing to risk an injury for a quick errand — and, after talking to him, neither am I.
Read on for more lessons Dr. Pratt and other emergency room doctors learned — and want you to remember — after years in the E.R.
Don’t slice an avocado in a hurry.
Adaira Landry, an E.R. physician at Harvard Medical School-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said knife injuries in the kitchen were among the most frequent injuries she saw.
Avocados are a major culprit, Dr. Landry added. “Sometimes I’ll even ask, ‘Oh, were you cutting avocado?,” she said. “And they’re like: ‘Yes! How did you know?’”
Bagels are also a source of many knife-related injuries, said Gregory Sugalski, acting chair of the emergency department at Hackensack University Medical Center. He frequently sees patients “slicing their hands slicing bagels.”
The best way to cut something like an avocado or a bagel is to use a secure, nonskid surface such as a wooden cutting board, and to cut away from your body, said Matt Shannon, the director of community emergency medicine at University of Florida Health.
“Never cut toward your hand,” he said.
Don’t trust a trampoline.
Several doctors said they avoided trampolines. “They’re a broken-bone factory,” Dr. Sugalski said. “We see fractures, dislocations, spinal injuries, head injuries, all the time.”
Over 800,000 injuries associated with trampolines were reported between 2009 and 2018, according to a 2022 study. And most occur when multiple people are bouncing together, so the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people jump one person at a time. It also suggests making sure there is adequate padding around bars and springs, and discourages somersaults and flips (one of the most common causes of permanent spine injuries).
Dr. Sugalski has two kids. “When I hear ‘trampoline,’” he said, “I’m like, ‘Ugh, can we not go to this birthday party?’”
Don’t pet strange dogs.
Dr. Pratt is a dog lover, but after seeing many canine attack victims in the E.R., he doesn’t pet unfamiliar dogs. “You don’t know what kind of trauma that animal has been put through and what kind of triggers it has,” he said.
“I think most dog owners have never seen what it looks like for a dog to maul someone,” Dr. Pratt said. “I have.” He doesn’t put his face too close to any dog either, he said.
If you don’t know a dog, even if it’s your neighbor’s dog, you’re better off not approaching it at all, Dr. Sugalski said. Most dog-bite injuries in the United States, researchers found, are inflicted by pets and not strays.
With his own kids, who are “obsessed with dogs,” Dr. Sugalski added, “I say, ‘Let’s say hi from a distance,’ because you never know.”
Don’t ignore sudden symptoms.
Dr. Landry takes her own unexpected and extreme symptoms seriously. If you experience something like severe chest pain or paralysis of a body part, come to the E.R. immediately, she said.
“I understand that there’s going to be medical costs and the time in the emergency room, but those shouldn’t preclude you from saving your own life,” Dr. Landry added.
And if you have heart attack or stroke symptoms, do not drive yourself to the hospital, said Michael E. Silverman, the vice chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey.
He has seen people do this over the years, and it can lead to accidents and injuries. And, Dr. Silverman added, the paramedics have defibrillators and can alert the hospital to prep a cardiac team, saving you valuable time.
Don’t ride without a helmet.
If you’re not wearing a helmet, whether it’s for sports or e-bikes, “you’re just looking for serious injury,” Dr. Sugalski said. “We see folks come in with helmets and without helmets, and it’s night and day.”
The use of bike helmets, for example, have been shown to significantly reduce risk of serious head injury. That’s why Dr. Sugalski always wears one, he said: “For the most part, you’re walking away.”
I’ve made many of the mistakes mentioned above, but I’m going to stop. I’d rather chat with doctors than be wheeled into the emergency room to see them.
How nutritious is fake meat?
If you like the taste and the texture of meat but want to eat less of it, fake-meat burgers, sausages, nuggets and other products can be a helpful steppingstone. But how healthy are these products?
Read the article: Is Fake Meat Better for You Than Real Meat?
New drugs for heart failure offer hope to patients.
Heart failure is a condition that occurs when the heart can’t pump out enough blood and oxygen to meet the body’s needs — and related deaths have been climbing steadily for over two decades. But growing awareness of the condition and its risk factors could change that.