Doctors Throw Tantrums Too

So weekends at the hospital have small potential to be a little less insane than the weekdays. There is usually a lot less patients, but also less staff. Regular services aren't offered on the weekends (in small hospitals such as mine)- services such as physical therapy, non-emergency surgeries, short procedures, etc.

Last night I come on to the floor, and its already a slow night. I'm already finished with my charting at 8pm, which means that I can sit at the nurses station at 8pm- And this is almost unheard of. This means that *sometimes* doctors are still lingering at the station, finishing up the days work for them. This was such the case last night.

Said doctor was already frustrated that he was still doing work at 8pm on a Saturday. He is a specialist and was seeing a patient for that specific specialty, obviously. However the patients family was very upset about a lot of other issues going on with the patient, and Mr.NiceDoctor was attempting to consult other specialties for this patient and even get some therapy started that night to speed up the healing process.

In order to do that, he had to page other doctors to speak with them for advice on what to order. So he pages Doctor #1. Waits 15 minutes. No answer. Pages him again. No answer. Pages another doctor. Doctor #2 answers, He's not on call this weekend- Click! Hang up. Mr.NiceDoctor dials operator in a rage to find out WHO is officially on call for the specialty he needs. Operator says....Oh...Its Doctor #3.  Mr. NiceDoctor pages Doctor #3- That doctor says, "No- you must mean the OTHER DoctorWithTheSameLastNameAsMe. I'm not with that specialty."

This is precisely when Mr.NiceDoctor hangs up the phone and says (rather loudly) to anyone thats within earshot- "IS IT ALWAYS THIS DIFFICULT!?" ( I think he even stomped his foot, too.)

My answer, very softly- "Every day."  And then I smiled.

He then proceeded to ramble on, "Is it always this hard to get in touch with people around here?!"

And I held back....because I love my job, so so so...so, much-And I said nothing except a little shrug. But me and my telepathic coworker said in our minds, "Just doctors!"


In case you like happy endings, Mr.NiceDoctor DID eventually get in contact with the specialty he needed and the patient was started on 3 antibiotics. Happy Ending.



:-) WNB



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