Failure of communication led to an excessive hospital stay

On a late afternoon in mid-July I was finishing up my first Sunday on call as a third year medical student. I glanced over the patient list for 4 East, the internal medicine floor I had been assigned to cover. Familiar with patients in their eighties and nineties, I was surprised to see a 22-year-old patient admitted with acute kidney injury.

He was a nice-looking young man in good spirits. Spanish …

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