Daniel Barkhuff, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and a physician in the UVM Medical Center Emergency Department

(JANUARY 9, 2023) Daniel Barkhuff, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and a physician in the UVM Medical Center Emergency Department, shares some of the grueling challenges of his work environment in a candid opinion piece in VT Digger.

He bemoans the suicide attempts, overdoses, gunshots, broken bones, violent beatings and assaults (of staff by patients), and shortages—of hospital staff, of police, of case workers, and above all, of inpatient psychiatric beds anywhere in Vermont—and the ill-advised policies and choices that, step by step, have brought us to where we find ourselves today.

“A little-known fact about emergency medicine is we’re the only entity in the health care system that, by law, can never say no to a patient asking to be seen,” Barkhuff writes. “That’s a vital, necessary, and moral aspect of what we do, but it’s also the heart of the mental health care problem. Just send ‘them’ all to the ED, and let the ED figure it out.”

He concludes, “We can choose differently, if we want to.”