Thanksgiving In The ER: Potluck Dinner, Dressing Injuries
(CBS) -- Firefighters and police officers don't get the day off on Thanksgiving, and neither do hospital emergency rooms.
But at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the ER staffers are operating on a pot-luck turkey with all the trimmings.
Most of the problems Rush University Medical Center emergency medicine Dr. Paul Casey treats on Thanksgiving are minor. He said over the past 10 Thanksgivings, he's noticed one big uptick in injuries such as burns and bleeding fingers that can be blamed on amateur chefs chopping and cooking.
"It's just wound dressing and sutures for finger injuries," he says.
And Casey says that leaves time for the pot luck, which is served not in an ER bay but in the nearby break room.
"In a lot of ways this is as much our family, (because) we spend as much time with our co-workers here as we spend with our family at home," he says. "So it's kind of a nice tradition that's evolved over the years."
Every food you could imagine as part of a Thanksgiving dinner table is there, most of it homemade.