Right now, it feels likes healthcare is all about "meeting metrics". As someone on the front lines providing patient care, regardless of a person's ability to pay, it feels those metrics are ill-aligned with the realities of emergency medicine. It feels that the executives who are in charge of establishing the metrics and analyzing numbers and graphs have no concept of what really happens. My job is to fix the broken and treat the sick. Yes, I can assess an ankle, order an xray, splint and give the person appropriate follow up in less than an hour. That's easy. However, sometimes my job is a lot more than things that can be quantified, assigned a number and plotted on a graph. Sometimes my job is taking care of the family as much as I take care of the patient. Sometimes it is delivering life altering news, dealing with the heart broken, holding hands, drying tears. Sometimes it requires cultural sensitivity. Sometimes it entails ...