Take-home message

Outside Josephine Johns’ room at Springtree, Camardi prepares his student for an ethical dilemma: Johns has dementia, he tells them. And she has breast cancer.

“Now, what do you do? How do you do it? And what else do you want to know?”

The young doctors race to offer questions: Is her family in the picture? Is she screaming out and aggressive, or is she passive? What’s her quality of life? Is she mentally aware enough to give consent for the procedure?

Camardi nods, but he doesn’t answer.

Dr. Michael Camardi (far right) watches as Cristian Falcon (from left), Supreet Manesh, Kashan Khan and Dunnett Durando take turns listening to the lungs of Springtree Healthcare Center nursing home resident Katherine Bennett, 86.

Instead, he tells them: “Now, I want you to go home and stare at the ceiling and think about these questions, and try to let the rightness or the wrongness of the situation come to you. These are all questions that will arise again and again in your career.”

Camardi opens Johns’ door and voila: He has pulled another bouquet from his sleeve. The students have been tricked.

The patient’s dementia is, in fact, so mild that she has no trouble flirting with Camardi — or recalling his name.

She had breast cancer, but it was actually two years ago, and a lumpectomy was performed.

She’s their last patient of the day, and Camardi leaves them with one final take-home message before he drives — Camardi speed, of course — to see more patients at the hospital:

As much care and consideration should go into treating a 93-year-old nursing home patient with dementia as a healthy 25-year-old who shows up in the E.R.

“If I shocked you with Josephine,” he tells them, “never forget it.”