I know this may seem a bit obsessive, but I'm so amped after the World Series game tonight, I probably wont sleep until after tomorrow nights game. I was rereading my last little essay and I felt that the story was somewhat incomplete. Specifically, the reason I didn't get written up by this Primary Care Physician (PCP). If I knew how to imbed a link, I'd put it here.
Just to jump right in here, the reason I didn't get successfully written up (Krishna knows he tried) was because the Director Of Nursing (DON) went into the hospital administrator and raised Holly Hell. Nurses take a lot of bullshit from docs. By and large, they just grit their teeth behind said assholes back and bad mouth him like he owed 'em money after he leaves. But Krishna help the douche bag who abuses the staff and is wrong. This noble man of Medical Letters was most definitely wrong, and he had the added baggage of being an actual Massengill Brand Giant Douche Bag. His breath reeked of vinegar and water. On a good day you might get a whiff of Fresh Summer's Eve, but I fear I digress.
I may have been a lowly student at the time, but I always knew where the true power was in the hospital, nurses. It helped that I was 30 years younger and still in shape from playing football and lifting weights. I never missed a chance to suck up to the nursing staff when I had some spare time. I was extra good at helping pull heavy patients up in bed, or helping them move someone from a chair to their bed. My favorite was helping put combative patients into four point restraints. My hands were big enough that I could generally hold down both legs at the knees with one hand and grab a wrist with the other. That ends up being very labor efficient in a pinch. My secret, sick and/or deranged patients don't tend to put up much of a coordinated effort to avoid the cuffs. Most docs would call this sort of thing scut work. Work that they felt was beneath these Godlike Pillars of Medicine. (You see, I'm a self hatin' Doctor.) Never once in my whole medical career did I ever regret helping out nurses. They were fun to talk to. They were fun to flirt with. They were fun to look at, and most of all, they taught me more practical medical knowledge than all my other "mentors" combined.
In this case it all started with the Medical ICU nurses. When I told them that I was getting written up and probably failing my internal medicine rotation, all for putting in a shit ton of work to help them out; well, they shifted into revolt mode. They were threatening to walk out right then and there to go down to the Hospital Administrators office and raise all kinds of poop. (Opps, I meant shit.) It was all that I could do to keep them from divvying up their patients right then and there and doing just that. After I left, they bolted anyway. Smartly, they decided to go bitch at the DON. Chain of command and all that. The DON, being no fool her own self, realized that if it boiled down to sticking up for these highly specialized and educated nurses or backing the play of Dr. Massengill, well, that was probably a pretty easy decision for her. I wish I could say that she stuck up for me because she recognized the prodigy like nature of my medical knowledge and abilities. In all honesty, she thought I had entirely too much free time on my hands, and that my nurse flirting was disruptive to the efficient management of her staff. She was probably right. I was somewhat of a fuck up back then. Smart enough to get away with it though. That's probably what pissed her off more than anything.
As always I digress... again. It's probably going to come as a surprise to everyone here, I married a nurse. Shocked? (Well, it could've been a cute Respiratory Therapist or a buxom X-ray tech, but it weren't.) She, and her professional brethren are the ones truly on the front lines of this Ebola mess. I'm sort of sitting just out of the line of fire my own self, but she's the one whom (or is it who?) the hospital is going to ask to gown and glove up and throw her immune system into the breach. It sure wasn't that rectal wart of an ED doc that got sick in Texas. The one who screwed the pooch so bad with that poor Mr. Duncan. and his family. (Or is it whom?) (Also, while I'm just stroking off here, some free advice; if you're in the upper management, CFO?, @ Dallas Presbyterian, I'd get my check writin' hand limbered up, cuz you's gots some zeros to go write my man! Maybe if you write it in logarithmic form? Scientific notation? Binary maybe? Base 16? I don't know. Might save ya from a nasty case of corporate tunnel disease. My DX now: Industrial Disease! For Vishnu's sake, SETTLE!! QUICKLY!!)
So to all you overworked, understaffed nurses out there, well, you can't see it but I doffed my Genuine, Major League Baseball, authentic, three times as much as a knock off, Kansas City Royals Dark Blue Game Cap. Size 7 and 1/2. I owe my career to you all. You taught me how to read cardiac monitors while letting me sit in your presence. You taught me how to sink an IV, first time, every time. Well, 90% is pretty good too. I promise I never once looked down the top of any of your uniforms while doing so. For that would be wrong! And you were always around when I needed moral support. Like when performing a new procedure that I wasn't quite as comfortable with as I might have liked to have been. Many a time you had confidence in me when I didn't have it in myself. You'd be surprised how soothing a kind, reassuring voice can be the first time you're trying to cram a chest tube into a dying man's pleural cavity while simultaneously trying to avoid the blood vessels and nerves that tend to follow the inferior border of the ribs, not to mention the lungs themselves, on your own. It was a nurse that talked me out of using a hammer that day too. Valuable information that.
People should realize how much of a bargain these people are.
PRY YOUR DAMN WALLETS OPEN AND PAY MY WIFE MORE DAMN IT!!!
Just a thought.
xxxooo
dc