Joseph Epstein

n A long time ago, as young fourth year medical students,
we were doing our first clinical rotation in surgery at Western
Hospital. Joe was giving us a bedside tutorial one afternoon.
There were six of us, and a couple of final year students as well
standing around the bed of an elderly patient with chronic
leg ulcers. After asking one of the group to describe the ulcer,
and getting a fairly ‘ordinary’ response, Joe decided that we
needed to learn a system of describing ulcers. For the next few
hours, we were standing round the bed reciting: ‘Size, site,
shape, floor, edge, base, discharge, glands, biopsy’ until we
had done it perfectly around the eight of us ten times over.
I guess it worked, as I can still recite it over 20 years later!
1It had become unfashionable to wear the short white student
coats when we were final year medical students. I remember
the group of us turning up to an outpatient clinic one day at
Western Hospital, and Joe being upset that we did not have our
white coats on. In the middle of the clinic, he told us that he
didn’t care if we turned up naked, as long as we had our white
coats on. Not sure what the patients would have thought of that.
Elizabeth Kyle | Emergency Physician, Townsville and former
student. Former Western Health emergency medicine registrar
That was Joe, always
looking out for the patient’s
best interests even if that
ruffled some feathers.
n One very busy evening
shift at Footscray we had a
particularly unwell young
patient with sepsis. They
were waiting for an ICU bed.
Although the ICU physically
had bed spaces, there were
not enough staff to allow
one-to-one nursing and so
the patient had to wait in ED.
Of course, they were getting
way less than one-to-one
nursing care in the ED due
to multiple unwell patients
and severe access block and
crowding. Despite calls to the
ICU consultant and hospital
executive we were told to
hold the patient in ED.
Joe was incensed at this and
realising that the patient was
actually getting less medical
and nursing attention in the
ED than they would be getting
in ICU even at its current
state. He packed the patient
up and pushed the bed
himself up to the ICU. When
he arrived, he moved the
trolley into the empty ICU bay,
and asked the – shall we say,
surprised – ICU staff to receive
handover of their patient.
That was Joe, always
looking out for the patient’s
best interests even if that
ruffled some feathers.
David Lightfoot | emergency
physician, Melbourne.
Former Western Health
emergency physician
24 | A tribute to Joseph Epstein