Wrestling with "Death" every day
——Zhou Feihu, Director of the Department of Critical Care Medicine, First Medical Center, PLA General Hospital
At the end of July, Zhou Feihu, director of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the First Medical Center of the PLA General Hospital, had just returned from a mission in Ali, Tibet.
Each patient's condition must be inquired one by one. Zhou Feihu hurriedly shuttled through the ward, until it was early morning when he was done.
After 19 years of intensive medicine, Zhou Feihu spends almost every day busy.
In the eyes of Pan Liang, the attending doctor of the Department of Critical Care Medicine, he is always "hard-working" and rarely rests. "The most important thing is always the patient's affairs, which must not be delayed. You can put your own affairs later."
"He often said that the doctor in the ICU is the one who stands in front of the 'ghost of death'. As long as we pull a hand, the patient will have hope of living." Pan Liang said, "He told us with actions that we must not relax for a moment, and must Race against time to save the patient."
Create a "warm ICU"
More than a month ago, the Department of Critical Care Medicine admitted a pregnant woman from Xi'an.
The mother was in critical condition at the time of delivery, suffering from severe multiple organ insufficiency, including renal failure, heart failure and coagulation disorders.
Zhou Feihu organized a consultation with multidisciplinary experts as soon as possible, and discussed the treatment plan overnight.
The treatment plan was changed again and again. In the end, Zhou Feihu comprehensively considered the patient's physical condition and decided on a plan of "preserving life first, correcting coagulation disorders, and stabilizing the condition".
But he is still not reconciled and hopes to restore some of the patient's kidney function.
Every day, Zhou Feihu carefully adjusts the medication according to the maternal physical indicators.
Halfway through, her condition deteriorated, and even the patient's family was almost "desperate", but Zhou Feihu always took active treatment and encouraged the patient "if you can be cured, you will soon get better."
With Zhou Feihu's insistence, the "miracle" really happened. A few days later, the mother's condition was controlled and she even resumed urination.
After 10 days, the patient turned the corner and was transferred out of the intensive care unit. After Zhou Feihu told her a series of precautions before she was discharged from the hospital, she hurried back to the ward to treat the next patient.
"Being a critical care doctor is like this. You are always in a race against time. You have to wrestle with the 'death' and rob the patient." Zhou Feihu explained, "What we hope to achieve is to always give the patient hope. Let the patient not only live Go down and live a good life."
To this end, Zhou Feihu proposed to create a "warm ICU".
He celebrated the patient's birthday, took the patient's hand for encouragement and comfort during ward rounds, and added rehabilitation physiotherapy equipment in the ward.
Grippers, upright beds, and rehabilitation bikes have all been brought in for patient rehabilitation.
In 2019, Zhou Feihu's intensive care unit admitted a young man with brain damage caused by heat stroke. At first, the patient often fell into a coma and needed rescue.
Zhou Feihu and the team divided the treatment in stages, and used a grip machine and an upright bed to help him recover his muscle strength.
After three years of careful treatment, the young man has gone from being inseparable from the ventilator to being offline for 13-14 hours a day, and can stand up briefly with the help of auxiliary tools.
"No matter how hard it is, how long and difficult the process is, as long as there is a glimmer of hope, you must never give up." Zhou Feihu said firmly.
He always bears in mind the scientific training of the Department of Critical Care Medicine: rely on life and never give up.
Under the leadership of Zhou Feihu, the success rate of treatment in the Department of Intensive Medicine of the First Medical Center of the PLA General Hospital has remained above 95% over the years, and thousands of critically ill patients who once struggled on the line of death have been reborn.
How to keep patients away from the ICU
In addition to saving the patient's life, Zhou Feihu is also thinking, "how to keep the patient from coming to the ICU".
In his view, prevention is more important than cure.
Since 2016, Zhou Feihu has begun to study the construction of "smart ICU", trying to establish an automated ICU early warning system.
He is equipped with an intelligent information collection vehicle in the ward, which can extract and upload the data of the condition change at any time.
Once the patient's index score reaches the risk threshold, the system will automatically generate a red line warning, prompting medical staff to rescue in time.
In addition, in order to strengthen the prevention of diseases in the army, Zhou Feihu also carried out special research on the possible traumatic MODS, rhabdomyolysis, heat stroke and other diseases that may occur in front-line combat troops.
The diseases faced by different geographical environments are different. Pulmonary edema and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases are frequently encountered in plateau areas, and heat stroke is often encountered in coastal areas.
For this reason, Zhou Feihu goes to the army to do research every year. After forming the research results, he feeds it back to the army to teach officers and soldiers early prevention and first aid methods.
Considering that offline training is sometimes inconvenient, Zhou Feihu uses the remote consultation system to conduct online consultations with troops in remote areas, and he can also give online lectures at ordinary times.
He also went to the Ali Plateau in Tibet three times and participated in the construction of the intelligent intensive care unit of the plateau officers and soldiers field hospital, "to move the front line of critical care forward, so that the critically ill patients can receive early treatment on the front line before they enter the ICU, and improve the success rate of treatment of critically ill patients" .
Charge to the end as a PLA soldier
In Zhou Feihu's view, as a military doctor, you must "always think about training and fighting".
"Always remember that there is a word 'military' in front of the military doctor," he emphasized.
In recent years, Zhou Feihu has appeared in urgent and dangerous tasks such as earthquake relief, Ebola fight, and international peacekeeping.
In 2015, as the captain of the medical team of the PLA General Hospital, he participated in the second batch of the PLA medical team to Liberia to carry out the task of combating the Ebola hemorrhagic fever epidemic. In two months, he and his teammates received a total of 61 patients and treated Ebola. There are 38 suspected patients and 5 confirmed Ebola patients, and the success rate of critically ill patients is over 80%.
In 2016, Zhou Feihu set off again to participate in the treatment of wounded soldiers in my country's peacekeeping mission to Mali.
It was the first time he faced a real battlefield.
Zhou Feihu did not flinch, and tried every means to carry out treatment in the case of shortage of medicines and first-aid facilities, and successfully stabilized the wounded soldiers.
Later, some media said that Zhou Feihu was the prototype of the Chinese military doctor who fought against the Ebola virus in Africa in the movie "Wolf Warrior".
But he smiled and said: "Every comrade-in-arms who fights with me is a prototype. We are just fulfilling the responsibility of a soldier and letting the international community witness the power of China!"
At the beginning of 2020, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic broke out, Zhou Feihu once again took on the heavy burden and fought on the front line day and night as the main member of the expert group for the treatment of patients with new coronary pneumonia in the People's Liberation Army General Hospital.
After the domestic epidemic situation stabilized slightly, he served as the leader of the PLA's anti-epidemic expert team in Pakistan, and led a team to Pakistan to carry out the task of fighting the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
After arriving in Pakistan, Zhou Feihu led his comrades to conduct a half-month visit, and then put forward nine prevention and control suggestions based on factors such as local health habits and religious customs.
He also took the lead in entering the "red zone" to conduct ward rounds and joint consultations for local patients with new crown difficulties.
Zhou Feihu remembered that there were riots in Pakistan at that time, and the most dangerous explosion occurred 1 km away from the station.
He also led a five-person medical team to Lahore and Karachi, where the epidemic was most severe in Pakistan, to guide epidemic prevention and control and patient treatment.
When the mission expired two months later, the Pakistani Army Chief of Staff personally issued a certificate of appreciation to him. The President of Pakistan and the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan praised Zhou Feihu and his comrades in arms for "exemplifying China-Pakistan friendship with practical actions".
"As a military doctor, what you see is disease, and what you are tasked with is a mission." said the soldier in white, who just returned from a mission in the Ali Plateau, "I am a soldier. They will all charge to the end as a soldier of the People's Liberation Army!"
China Youth Daily China Youth Daily reporter Zheng Tianran trainee reporter Du Jiabing correspondent Zhang Kui Chen Gang