"The Disruptive Behavior of Doctors"

Heogog53 · May 1, 2009

in the first or i worked in, in the '80's, there was a "good old boy" system in place. most of the docs had graduated from the same med school, because there weren't that many to choose from when they went to school. these were the docs who had been brought up to believe that a nurse instantly yielded a chair for the doc when he appeared. there were no female surgeons at my hospital.

they were allowed to have tantrums, to throw things, to yell at the staff, and only once did anyone pay the price for their own crappy behavior. the open heart team walked off after one surgeon, reknowned for his rudeness, short temper and throwing things, threw a dirty scalpel in the general direction of the circulator. it missed her by inches. he had his or rights suspended for 6 months.

i was screamed at by an anesthesiologist with whom i thought i'd been friends with(for 6 years), one day when i took a patient to the or in his absence. you see, he always had a meeting on that day of the week, so i broke the unwritten rule. however, according to my bosses, the patient had to be in the room by x time- so i did what my bosses had declared as policy. i was called from the or into the nurse managers office. there, with my director and the nurse manager in the room, the doc just absolutely savaged me verbally, with their looking on and not a single word was spoken in my defense. nope, they added to it. i was reduced to tears; the idea that my "friend" would turn on me like a wolf as well as not having any backup from my chain of command just knocked my legs out from under me.

i cried for three hours before i could go back into his room. i made a vow that i would not speak to him at all, except when it came to patient care, ever again. i kept it, too. he knew why i wouldn't speak to him(he made some comment to another doc about not ******* me off cos i'd never give him the time of day again.

i worked at a military hospital- guess what; the uniform code of military justice prevented most of that kind of behavior, from the military side, but we did have a couple civilian docs, one of whom i'd worked with before and despised, who loved to yell and scream. well, the military may take it's time, but they decided not to renew his contract. generally, we treated each other with friendly regard, and with formality as demanded by military protocol. that was actually a very nice experience, once we got rid of bigmouth.

currently, i work at a large university hospital. most of the docs are great to work with. it's a very family oriented place, somehow, plus we have a code of conduct that we have to sign every year, that states that everyone is treated with respect. recently, we got a new peds surgeon, who yells at everyone, all the time. mostly he works over in the women/children's hospital, and they just take it. the other night he had to work over in the main or and he kicked up a fuss about having to work there, that he didn't have a peds team, that his setup was completely different...and so on and so on. the circulator took it personally when he started shouting something about, "you g-d nurses! it's all your fault." now in an or, there are at least four people in the room; the scrub, circulator, anesthesia and surgeon. in a big place with residents etc, there were probably more people than that.

the nurse filled out an incident reoport. our immediate boss tried to brush it off. said she'd have a meeting with the doc. then would give no details of the meetings result with the doc to the nurse. she told our manager that she was going above her head, to risk management and the code of conduct folks. no one likes this doc and he seems to hate it here. he keeps saying it, anyway. all of us want him to get, because our doctors do not treat us like that. granted they can get frustrated at the situation they find themselves in, and then they do some impersonal yelling, however, that happens. it's not an attack at a personal level. that we all understand, considering the kind of cases they do(try a 14 hour case).

but at another hospital, a nurse and a scrub sued a surgeon for sexual harrassment and won.

if we stand up for ourselves and take it out of the department level, up to the risk management/employee relations folks, they will take an interest in what we have to say. but if we accept our department managers to take care of those kinds of issues, most of the time, you'll be sadly mistaken.

if something like that happens, and there are documented witnesses, fill out an incident report and take it to your chain of command, and then go higher. we are not slaves, nor are we stupid, but many of us just seem to allow the docs to carry on this way. we need to be both pro-active and re-active to shoddy treatment. if that doc in india had assaulted me, i would have called the cops and sued him for assault and battery- and would have won. might have even sued the hospital for employing such a jackass.

nursekline · May 2, 2009

I had such a bad experience with a particular doc in the ER as a nursing student (I was working there as a nurse tech). This doc would belittle me in front of everyone and anyone, including patient's. :icon_roll As nurse techs, we had to alternate between working in the ER and urgent care. If I was assigned to uc with him, he would ask other docs RIGHT in front of me and everyone else, if they would switch with him!!! I used to go in the locker room and cry about it, I had and still have no idea what I ever did to him to make him treat me as he did. I complained to my nurse manager and she said that a lot of the nurses had complained about him but that her hands were tied because the chief ER doc liked him! :madface: I LOVED working in the ER/UC but dreaded going in to work because of him. I was eventually offered a nursing position (upon graduation) in the ER (which back than was not usually offered to new grads) but refused because I would have to work with him. I regret that decision now!!!! :uhoh3:

nursekline · May 2, 2009

I picked up a shift on another floor a couple of weeks ago. Our "nurses station" comprises of two chairs and a four foot desk and I was discussing a patient history/family problems etc with a care manager. Unidentified person (doctor) breezes in and says "One of you has to get up, I'm going to be writing orders here" Why? Really why? There are also available chairs in the med room he could have sat. I spend about three quarters of my day standing up. However, this is just disrespect, but the disrespect started with the orificehole who designed the nurses station this way because he was "tired of seeing nurses sitting on their asses" Oh really? So now when you have about ten people during the day, PT's MD's nurses, PA's, Social workers at any one given time vying for privacy and space to talk about patients it doesn't work.
The dilemma at night when you know damned well that you need to call the doctor, however, you know this doctor will start yelling and screaming. Same screaming doctor has given me an order to "Do whatever the f- you want" which I wrote verbatim. Patient ended up in ICU and dying so it was not one of those "You were rude and didn't need to call him" issues.

OMG, I LOVE that you wrote his order verbatim...that's awesome!! What a jerk.

DaFreak71 · May 2, 2009

When I was in my second semester of nursing school--I did the unthinkable. It was the end of the clinical day and all the students were feverishly charting so we wouldn't get into trouble for being late to post-conference. I was finishing up my charting and a doctor came up to the desk and asked who had chart X. I said I did. He said "I need it". I said "Just one minute...I've got like two sentences to write". There were about five or so classmates standing next to me and they all let out a collective gasp. The doctor stood there for a second, not quite knowing how to react and he said "No problem...looks like you're doing a good job". He said it in a genuine manner, which caused my classmates to collectively stare wide eyed as though they had never seen an "impetuous" comment replied to with such respect. Of course (because I'm really sarcastic) I took it a step farther and said "If you doctors worked on your penmanship a bit more, we wouldn't end up spending half the day trying to decipher it". He laughed and said "Yes ma'am--I'll work on that". HA HA! What a cool guy. We exchanged sarcastic smiles with each other and it was fun for both of us. Of course my classmates brought it up in post-conference because they thought I was incredibly rude. I told the instructor what transpired and she laughed too. So I had a double win that day....stood my ground in a nice and funny way and denied my classmates the satisfaction of getting me in trouble. Yes...that was a good day. A rarity in nursing school. :lol2:

DaFreak71 · May 2, 2009

I once had a jerk attorney come over to my workstation (when I worked for a law firm) and say, "Um, sweetie, you made a mistake" in an extremely condescending tone. I looked right at him and said, "My name is AtomicWoman." Then I stared him down. (I hadn't made a mistake, either, but that's another matter.) From then on, whenever Jerkenstein came needed something from me, he would say "sweetie" and then really sarcastically say, "Oh! I mean AtomicWoman!". He did this until I left the firm for unrelated reasons. He's lucky I didn't keep a brick at my workstation. :angryfire

ROFL--Jerkenstein! I'm gonna use that one liberally. :lol2:

SoundofMusic · May 2, 2009

What gets me are the gaggles of interns and residents who land in our nsg station every a.m. to do rounds. Doing rounds I understand, but so many of them seem to linger around, just standing there socializing amongst each other with their aromatic cups of Starbucks in hand, while I, the nurse, could only DREAM of being able to stand around socializing, much less a chance at a fresh cup of coffee during the busy morning. I sometimes just dream that perhaps ONE of them might offer ME cup, or go get one for me, as a reward for busting it all day for their patients.

Do you EVER wonder when they are going to do this? To actually show some appreciation to nurses? It always seem to be the nursing directors who do this .. .how about the docs? Why don't doctors, as a group, devote a day or something to thanking nurses in some way for putting up with all we do?

I also love the female residents who strut around in stilletoes and their white coats. Seems their job must not be TOO bad if they can wear high heels during rounds.

RN1982 · May 2, 2009

Rounds in stilletos? That's kind of tacky. I think if we had more respect for our fellow nurses, we would get more respect from outside professions. I can't say that most docs do not appreciate us though. For the most part, when docs ask me for something they say thank you or if I help them with a procedure, they say thanks for your help. In rounds, they ask for my opinion and to me that means that they value what I have to say because why even bother asking me if they didn't value it.

loveshospital · May 2, 2009

I had such a bad experience with a particular doc in the ER as a nursing student (I was working there as a nurse tech). This doc would belittle me in front of everyone and anyone, including patient's. :icon_roll As nurse techs, we had to alternate between working in the ER and urgent care. If I was assigned to uc with him, he would ask other docs RIGHT in front of me and everyone else, if they would switch with him!!! I used to go in the locker room and cry about it, I had and still have no idea what I ever did to him to make him treat me as he did. I complained to my nurse manager and she said that a lot of the nurses had complained about him but that her hands were tied because the chief ER doc liked him! I LOVED working in the ER/UC but dreaded going in to work because of him. I was eventually offered a nursing position (upon graduation) in the ER (which back than was not usually offered to new grads) but refused because I would have to work with him. I regret that decision now!!!!

That is awful,some people were just born to be mean,in my class we have a couple of mean girls who takes pray on more sweater and nicer students and they dont even have a valid reason to be so rude,I think some people are just insecure because the happy ones usually try to spread and surround themselves with positive energy!

Duranie · May 3, 2009

Here is a link to a MedscapeCME on this very topic--

http://cme.medscape.com/viewprogram/19250

tnrose · May 3, 2009

Why do you doubt they spend time in forums like this complaining? Do you feel like it's because they are more mature, or it's because of the status you assign to someone with a MD behind their name?

DaFreak71 · May 3, 2009

What gets me are the gaggles of interns and residents who land in our nsg station every a.m. to do rounds. Doing rounds I understand, but so many of them seem to linger around, just standing there socializing amongst each other with their aromatic cups of Starbucks in hand, while I, the nurse, could only DREAM of being able to stand around socializing, much less a chance at a fresh cup of coffee during the busy morning. I sometimes just dream that perhaps ONE of them might offer ME cup, or go get one for me, as a reward for busting it all day for their patients. BTW--In addition to the wide variety of gourmet coffees on the unit, they also have a Starbucks in the lobby lol. I'm passing you a triple mocha with extra whipped cream (just visualize it hehe).
Do you EVER wonder when they are going to do this? To actually show some appreciation to nurses? It always seem to be the nursing directors who do this .. .how about the docs? Why don't doctors, as a group, devote a day or something to thanking nurses in some way for putting up with all we do?
I also love the female residents who strut around in stilletoes and their white coats. Seems their job must not be TOO bad if they can wear high heels during rounds.

I would find that irritating as well. I know when I was a nursing student we weren't allowed to have any kind of beverages on the floor and at the end of each semester we were required to bring appreciation gifts for the R.N.'s. With regard to nurse appreciation, I feel your pain vicariously. My husband is a nurse and the job he has now is AMAZING at being appreciative toward their nurses, not because they have to for employee retention purposes, but because they are genuinely awesome people. Frequent positive feedback, always gourmet coffee ready at any given moment, they notice and reward nurses for being helpful toward each other, for being a positive person in the work place, getting positive feedback from patients/families, working extra if someone is sick, etc.

Yeah, it would be nice if docs or interns would at least recognize our efforts (and some do!) but it isn't frequent. In the past I would read a doctors forum on another site and there was a thread about how "funny" it was that they don't bother reading the charting we do. Here's a novel thought: maybe if they read our notes it would make asking certain questions superfluous. But then again, I tend to live in a dream world LOL. :uhoh3:

deeone6603 · May 18, 2009

their behaviour i not only disruptive but somewhat irritatingly 'bossy' atimes. anybody out there who can give me a good recipe for handling doctors bossy behaviour in a calm and subtle way.