Emergency Doctor and Cinderella Read Free Page B

today.’
    Erin stared at him as her mind went completely blank. She could barely remember faces, let alone names. It had been so frantic, especially when an elderly woman had been brought in with a cardiac arrest at the same time a head injury had arrived. Names hadn’t been important; what had been important was saving lives that were hanging by a gossamer thread. ‘I didn’t have time to memorise their names,’ she said, putting Molly down. ‘My job is to save their lives.’
    ‘Do you ever wonder what happens to them after they leave you?’ he asked.
    Erin didn’t want to admit how much she wondered about them. She saw it as a weakness in herself, a frailtythat should have been knocked out of her way back in medical school. She fought against her human feelings all the time; they kept her awake at night—the sea of faces that floated past like ghosts. ‘Not really,’ she said, her tone chilly. ‘As I said, it’s not my job.’
    ‘You might want to have a rethink about that, Dr Taylor,’ he said. ‘The first trial ward-round begins tomorrow at the end of your shift.’
    Erin forced her gaze to remain connected to his. ‘Well, I can’t see that working. You know as well as anyone that A&E shifts don’t end according to the clock—they end when you finish treating your last patient, or at least get them to the point where you can hand them over to the next shift. You can’t just breeze out to start chatting with folks on the ward.’
    ‘You’re so right. I am quite aware of that,’ he said. ‘If you read the plan properly, you would see that wind-up on your last patient starts an hour before your shift ends—that gives you at least part of the last hour to do ward follow-through.’
    Erin gave him a mutinous look. ‘Oh, so we just walk out an hour before our shift ends then, and I suppose the next shift starts an hour early to fill in the gap? Or maybe we just abandon A&E altogether for an hour. Look, you can hardly force already overworked staff to take on even more responsibility.’
    ‘If you had read the proposal carefully, Dr Taylor, you would see that new arrangements do not mean more responsibility, just different responsibility. And, as far as implementing this plan, I’m not a great believer in using force to achieve anything,’ he said. ‘But I am the director, and I would like those working in my team to actually be a part of that team. The response fromeveryone else has been very positive, actually. I think you are going to find yourself out of touch with what everyone else is doing if you simply reject the department’s policies.’
    She arched her eyebrows. ‘So, what do you plan to do, Dr Chapman? Hand-hold every A&E doctor until you’re confident they’re doing things your way?’
    Eamon held her pert look, privately enjoying the way her burnt-toffee-brown eyes challenged his. Her defensive stance made him wonder why she was so against change. None of the other doctors he had briefed that morning had expressed any opposition to his proposal. In fact, three of them had cited cases where if such a plan had already been in place patient outcomes would have been better.
    From what he had heard Erin Taylor was not one of the more social members of the department. Apparently she never joined in with regular drinks on Friday evenings at one of the local bars, and as far as he could tell she lived alone, apart from a contraband cat. She was prickly and unfriendly, yet her clinical management of patients was spot-on. She was competent and efficient, although one or two of the nurses had mentioned in passing her bedside manner needed work.
    ‘I have certain goals I would like to achieve during my appointment,’ he said. ‘One of them is to improve overall outcomes for patients coming through A&E in this hospital. What you might not be aware of is how your expert work in A&E can be undone by isolating later management teams from the acute-care team. When was the last time you did a