The Steel Windpipe Summary

The Steel Windpipe serves best in demonstrating how I would maintain a level of detachment in order to avoid becoming emotionally compromised in serious situations while providing patient care. Bulgakov’s work describes both the external burdens, as well as the internal struggle many healthcare professionals face when encountering a patient who has experienced some major trauma. This story showcases a sense of humanity and responsibility to save a patient’s life at whatever cost. The piece portrays a doctor that is full of doubt and uncertainty about his decision to pursue medicine as well as having to perform a tracheotomy for the first time in a rural hospital, and it was personal for me as I continue to struggle with my own endeavors into the world of nursing. Despite the character’s overwhelming pressure in the operating room, he conducted himself with a steady hand and firm conviction in the face of a young girl’s likely death by diphtheria croup. Essentially, the story is about a young doctor overcoming his own fears and doubts in the midst of crisis; but most of all, it is about how he was able to overcome his uncertainties thanks to his own internal tenacity as well as the support system he had in his team of midwives and the
What do you mean by not agreeing? You’re condemning the baby to death. You must consent. Have you no pity?” (Nadelhaft & Bonebakker, 2008, p. 272). The Doctor’s sense of humanity played a role in saving the girl’s life, when he said protested to her mother and grandmother, who were initially apprehensive. The moment in the story that helped me reach a new understanding was when the doctor finally located the little girl’s windpipe. After the feldsher fainted from heat exhaustion while still clutching the hook and tearing at the girl’s windpipe, a glimmer of doubt sparkled in the doctor’s mind, “It’s fate…everything’s against me. We’ve certainly murdered Lidka now.” (Nadelhaft & Bonebakker, 2008, p.