Doctors and nurses

Doctors and Nurses

Well, fourth and final year is in full swing. During clinical practice I feel like one of the qualified staff, I am trusted and I am capable and it feels great. If it was not for the enormous work load, I would be on the high of a life time.

Yet what is really and truly different about final year is the amount of confidence I have gained and I am also very happy to say that I have become very assertive and I do not take anyone’s bull shit anymore. And another thing, something I never really noticed and always thought of as over-dramatised are doctor-nurse relationships. I never really noticed how much we need to interact before I started simulating actual professional practice.

Just last week another student and myself were writing nursing reports when we saw a bunch of third years practice taking each other’s blood pressure. We looked at them with puppy dog eyes and agreed that they were really very cute, the way they were feeling so important in their over-sized lab coats, holding on to their first ever stethoscope and sharing it between them in order to hear that oh so important brachial pulse. I am sure none of them would be so happy and proud if only they knew that the most fungal infections of the ear are transmitted through unsterilised ear-pieces, including headphones and well….stethoscopes. However, only time will tell whether these sweethearts will remain so endearing or will they become the monsters that make it impossible for nurses and doctors to ever be friends.

A few days ago I had a bit of a run-in with a doctor. I was tired and I wanted to go home, something I could not do until I had written all the reports. In order to write the reports, I have to check whether the doctors left any instructions on their files. I spent an hour looking for a file, asking if anyone had seen it and basically panicking because patient files are legal documents. All this time, there was one particular doctor sitting down and yapping about nothing in particular, ignoring my state of peril. When she finally got up, I found out she was sitting on the file the whole goddamn time. I think she farted on it too because it was very warm to the touch. A colleague of mine approached me asking me why I was not ready and I blurted out “Because that COW was SITTING on my FILE!” I was most certainly heard and the doctor has not spoken to me since.

That same day, one of my patients was going into renal failure and I needed to take him up to the Renal Unit as an emergency. As I waited for the lift, it finally came and opened and there was a doctor, ready for theatre, so it seemed, standing in the corner. For some reason the bloody wheel chair did not want to get into the lift. It kept jarring and I became completely neurotic while the doctor just stared the whole time. Then the unthinkable happened- the doors began to close on my patient. I screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” as my finger proceeded towards the lift button. It got there just in time. With some enormous burst of energy I managed to get the wheel chair in the lift, without any help from the doctor with his arms folded. He reminded me of Lurch from the Addam’s Family.

Lurch: “You should have walked in backwards.”

Sheesh! Now he tells me. “I’ll remember that.”

Lurch: “Because the way you did it, you could die and your patient could die.”

I just nodded in disbelief. In other words, this asshole would watch as I accidentally killed myself and my patient. However, his insolence did not stop there.

Lurch: “However, if you die it will not be a problem, I am sure you won’t be missed.”

“Really?” I said, “Well, when you die say hi to Satan for me!” and I walked out, leaving him gaping while I was pleasantly surprised by my own audacity. Woo hoo! Yeay me!

And the tension forever grows. I am not pointing any fingers here. There is fault on both parties’ behalf. There are many nurses out there who are failed doctors, who did not get a particular A level and settled for nursing, thus making them bitter while they suck on sour grapes, forever seething in jealousy. Also there are many doctors who simply think they are better than everyone else in the world and that they are God’s gift to mankind. People depend on doctors to heal them to grant them what everyone wants, which is good health…of course their ego grows and nothing could make a doctor angrier than a lowly nurse sharing in on his glory. It all makes sense really.

I have a lot of friends who are medical students and I wonder if it is possible that one day I’ll end up resenting them. I wonder if I can detach who they are whilst in hospital from their outside and social persona. And I wonder if I will still be able to see them as the genuine people I grew up with.

Not all doctors are nasty. There are some that truly astound me. While working in casualty, a particular doctor actually called me by name on a particular night shift and asked if I would like some coffee. I just stood there as my jaw dropped in shock. I swear, I bet a fly flew in and out again in that time. I politely told him no thanks, but it was lovely of him to offer. That was a totally new experience. It caught me completely off guard. Wow.

Sometimes I begin to wonder whether nastiness is something that grows on doctors when they find it impossible to see the miraculous side of their jobs, when it all becomes mundane and all about the money. I say this because sometimes doctors can be really mean to each other. I heard a horror story from a medical student that during rounds a particular doc asked a student a question she could not answer. He promptly told her to get down on her knees and beg him to pass her. At first she refused but then she realized what was at stake and she tearfully got down on her knees, put her hands together and begged like a beaten dog for a morsel of meat.
I say it once and I say it again, its all relative and one must always tread carefully, lest one treads on another’s toes. My motto is to keep my nose clean, avoid trouble and courteously take nobody’s crap. So as I sit with my student-doctor friends over cocktails I wonder with amusement, which one of the Dr. Jekylls will eventually become a Mr. Hyde?

Image: "Lurch" from the Addam's family