How One Doctor’s Personal Experience is Helping Improve Care for Patients and Staff
Diana Kane, MD, knew something was very wrong. It had been a week since she had undergone an outpatient procedure at a local surgical center and for the past five days she had been experiencing symptoms of an infection, including fever and fatigue. As chair and medical director of Emergency Medicine at Chester County Hospital in West Chester, PA, Dr. Kane understands that early intervention leads to better outcomes - but she’s still human. Embodying the old adage that doctors make the worst patients, she urged herself to press on through her workweek. After all, she thought, "If I stop and give in, then I must be sick. I don’t want to be sick, so I’m not giving in." But, soon enough, Kane was overwhelmed by the reality of her situation. On the morning of day six, as she watched her husband, a paramedic, get ready for a 16-hour shift, she told him that if he went to work, she would be dead by morning.
Within the hour, they were in the Emergency Department at Chester County Hospital. The nurses and physicians — all people she knew well — tended to her with incredible urgency. Dr. Kane had come around and admitted she was sick, but she was having trouble reconciling their austere demeanors and looks of concern with how she was feeling. Was she really dying? She couldn’t tell. She was living in a fog.
It turns out Kane contracted an infection in one of her legs from an instrument that was used during her outpatient procedure and subsequently developed sepsis.
Related Information from Chester County Hospital