Professionalism
I have just witnessed the most distasteful display from a supposed medical professional today.
Medicine teams are generally composed of an attending physician, a senior resident, a couple of interns (1st year residents), possibly a sub-intern (4th year student), and several junior students. I am the sub-intern. This means that I am supposed to function independently as an intern when it comes to patient care and medical decision making, with the senior resident supervising to make sure nobody dies under my care. Fairly straightforward. My patients are mine. I am, for all practical intents and purposes, their doctor. Thus, I tend to develop a sense of protectiveness over them. Not particularly surprising.
Tonight, while sitting around waiting for people to be admitted to the hospital (see post below on my current state of activity), I got a phone call. It was a nurse calling about Mr G. Now, it so happens that I had taken care of Mr G two weeks ago. It also happens that I knew he was back in the hospital, albeit under the surgical service, since I ran into him by chance in the emergency room two days ago. Being quite familiar with Mr G's medical problems, I was more than happy to help out in any way I could, even if he wasn't on my service. Apparently, Mr G was being put on a cardiology monitoring floor and needed new orders in the computer for food, meds, etc. I knew nothing about this but agreed to try to locate the right person responsible for the orders. After quite a bit of confusion, I discovered that the surgical service should still be in charge of his care. I called his nurse back and advised her to page the surgeons.
Half an hour later, she calls me back. She had tried paging several different surgeons, none of whom were returning her calls. She also told me that the surgical nurses told her Mr G would be transferring to a medical service team, in particular my team. This was news to me, since nobody had told us he was coming. Again, I told her I would try to get to the bottom of this. At this point, I still had nothing else to do, so I made a few investigative phone calls. My senior resident and intern asked what was going on, so I gave them the run-down. Apparently, the surgeons had considered transferring Mr G to our team since I had taken care of him two weeks ago, even though they had consulted another medicine team to take care of Mr G on this current hospital admission. The nursing and admitting staff therefore all thought we were his new doctors. My resident and intern both flipped out at me for being so accommodating, and for not being hard enough on the nurses to keep paging the surgeons. They refused to do anything for Mr G since nobody had called us to let us know about him. Now, I understand this. We weren't his official doctors. I would never go and put orders in for him when we weren't responsible for his care. But the fact that they were discouraging me from trying to help find the right people to take care of him, when I had nothing else to do, was outrageous.
I was so angry I had to leave the room.
I mean, this was my patient they were leaving uncared for. I had treated him for 8 days, grown to know him. There was no way in hell I was going to just drop the case and sit around twiddling my thumbs while Mr G sat in medical limbo. I went ahead and paged the surgeons myself. Luckily they called back and got the situation straightened out, but it was absolutely preposterous. The most outrageous part was when my intern came over and told me not to feel guilty, it's not my fault that nobody could figure out who should be taking care of Mr G. Of course it's not my fault, you crazy bitch. I don't feel guilty, I feel enraged that nobody was taking responsibility for this man. She even had the gall to start saying, "I know it's the noble thing to do, but..." then trailed off, probably realizing the stupidity of that comment.
We are the doctors. Patients depend on us. They trust that we will be doing the right thing for them. Poor Mr G wasn't even aware that this whole situation was happening. I still can't believe that my seniors were trying to stop me from doing my job. It's one thing to avoid inappropriate work, it's another to refuse effortless assistance. If we don't take responsibility for patient care, who will?
Medicine teams are generally composed of an attending physician, a senior resident, a couple of interns (1st year residents), possibly a sub-intern (4th year student), and several junior students. I am the sub-intern. This means that I am supposed to function independently as an intern when it comes to patient care and medical decision making, with the senior resident supervising to make sure nobody dies under my care. Fairly straightforward. My patients are mine. I am, for all practical intents and purposes, their doctor. Thus, I tend to develop a sense of protectiveness over them. Not particularly surprising.
Tonight, while sitting around waiting for people to be admitted to the hospital (see post below on my current state of activity), I got a phone call. It was a nurse calling about Mr G. Now, it so happens that I had taken care of Mr G two weeks ago. It also happens that I knew he was back in the hospital, albeit under the surgical service, since I ran into him by chance in the emergency room two days ago. Being quite familiar with Mr G's medical problems, I was more than happy to help out in any way I could, even if he wasn't on my service. Apparently, Mr G was being put on a cardiology monitoring floor and needed new orders in the computer for food, meds, etc. I knew nothing about this but agreed to try to locate the right person responsible for the orders. After quite a bit of confusion, I discovered that the surgical service should still be in charge of his care. I called his nurse back and advised her to page the surgeons.
Half an hour later, she calls me back. She had tried paging several different surgeons, none of whom were returning her calls. She also told me that the surgical nurses told her Mr G would be transferring to a medical service team, in particular my team. This was news to me, since nobody had told us he was coming. Again, I told her I would try to get to the bottom of this. At this point, I still had nothing else to do, so I made a few investigative phone calls. My senior resident and intern asked what was going on, so I gave them the run-down. Apparently, the surgeons had considered transferring Mr G to our team since I had taken care of him two weeks ago, even though they had consulted another medicine team to take care of Mr G on this current hospital admission. The nursing and admitting staff therefore all thought we were his new doctors. My resident and intern both flipped out at me for being so accommodating, and for not being hard enough on the nurses to keep paging the surgeons. They refused to do anything for Mr G since nobody had called us to let us know about him. Now, I understand this. We weren't his official doctors. I would never go and put orders in for him when we weren't responsible for his care. But the fact that they were discouraging me from trying to help find the right people to take care of him, when I had nothing else to do, was outrageous.
I was so angry I had to leave the room.
I mean, this was my patient they were leaving uncared for. I had treated him for 8 days, grown to know him. There was no way in hell I was going to just drop the case and sit around twiddling my thumbs while Mr G sat in medical limbo. I went ahead and paged the surgeons myself. Luckily they called back and got the situation straightened out, but it was absolutely preposterous. The most outrageous part was when my intern came over and told me not to feel guilty, it's not my fault that nobody could figure out who should be taking care of Mr G. Of course it's not my fault, you crazy bitch. I don't feel guilty, I feel enraged that nobody was taking responsibility for this man. She even had the gall to start saying, "I know it's the noble thing to do, but..." then trailed off, probably realizing the stupidity of that comment.
We are the doctors. Patients depend on us. They trust that we will be doing the right thing for them. Poor Mr G wasn't even aware that this whole situation was happening. I still can't believe that my seniors were trying to stop me from doing my job. It's one thing to avoid inappropriate work, it's another to refuse effortless assistance. If we don't take responsibility for patient care, who will?
posted by yvonne at 9:29 p.m.
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