Field Notes: The Case ER Docs Can't Help But Love.

If you ask emergency room doctors to name the most satisfying type of case they routinely diagnose and treat, there’s one answer that will come up surprisingly often.

Sure, we love bringing patients back from the brink of death, or identifying a subtle but potentially devastating heart attack. And we all have stories of a “great catch” we made—identifying a rare needle-in-the haystack diagnosis or else an extremely unusual presentation of a more common but dangerous problem.

But when it comes to simple, immediate gratification, a somewhat lower-stakes condition tops many of our lists of favorite things to treat.

It’s a rare instance where you can walk into a patient room, find a screaming little kid, work some clinical magic, and walk out 10-15 seconds later having fixed the problem.

In fact, here’s archival footage of every ER doctor after they do this procedure:

(Just kidding, that’s Dr. Peter Benton from the hit TV series ER, as portrayed by Eriq La Salle.)

So what’s the pediatric ailment we love to fix?