Dear Doctor Imajerk: (vent)

Published

I am sorry if you are unhappy with your tour of duty with the CTS surgeons here on our little PCU.

I'm sorry if you hate taking call. You are a resident. This is a teaching hospital. It is your job.

I'm sorry that you think that my patient's dropping blood pressures and non-existant Urinary Output were a crappy reason to wake you up at 4 in the morning.

I'm sorry you don't feel like you need to write orders for my patient.

I'm sorry you feel the need to be a rude a*****e when you are on the phone with me.

I'm sorry you feel so incompetent at your job that you apparently don't know which orders to write.

I'm sorry you have endured a month and a half in an assignment you obviously loathe.

I"m sorry you feel the need to be rude to all the nurses on this unit (but especially us night-shifters since we interfere with your sleep schedule).

But

I have a sinking feeling that the nights when you are on call will be riddled with calls every hour from all the nurses on this floor asking for orders for our patients. I have a feeling nurses will "forget" to inform each other that they are getting ready to call you and as soon as one hangs up another one will realize suddenly that only your expertise can save her patient from the brink.

*sigh*

And it would have been so much easier just to be polite and do your job.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

Don't ever apologize to a doctor for doing your job.

You last paragraph presents nurses as catty and the student doctors reading this forum will probably quote that in their forum. (And yes, they do read this forum.) LOL

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Oh believe me, I didn't apologize. I am just sick to death with this guy's rudeness and lack of compassion concerining the patients we care for on this unit. We're post-surgical, and UO tends to be kind of a big thing around here. *grin*

This doc has been nothing but rude and condescending for the past month and a half. We rarely get residents on this floor, but the last several have been outstanding, now this sudden change.

The bright spot is that there is only a month and a half left to endure, and I will be on vacation for the last 2 weeks of that. LOL

Now it would be really catty if we were to call him in the middle of the night for a PRN benadryl for sleep. But we wouldn't do that to Satan himself were Satan a resident on this floor. *grin* However, we continue to be as kind and considerate as we have been in the past. For example. "Hey, I'm calling Dr. **** Does anyone else need him?" And if this happens to be at 4 in the morning, it's his job.

I do feel better after the vent, and if the doctors can't take a joke (I'm sure they have occasional fantasies of making someone's life hell), then I will forgive them their lack of humour.

A vent is a vent, nothing more. . . . .

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We have doctors like that at our hospital. The primary ones that are like this are the attending's that have been there for years on end. I guess like with any job, you might just get sick of it after a while - or the amount of stress that builds up over time could cause doctors to... I guess blow their stack!

When I first started in nursing, the hospitals I initially worked at for a matter of months was a learning hospital as well, and I absolutely was amazed at how much easier the interns were to work with as opposed to the residents! I guess they're just so nervous about messing things up and saying the wrong thing that they pretty much don't show their emotion if you do wake them up in the middle of the night.

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I have met a few like that...just wait until a nurse pulls his a** out of the fire sometime, or stops him from making some huge mistake. Then maybe he'll realize how important we are. I wish that they could take a step back and think about this - what would I do if there were no nurses?

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I have met a few like that...just wait until a nurse pulls his a** out of the fire sometime, or stops him from making some huge mistake. Then maybe he'll realize how important we are. I wish that they could take a step back and think about this - what would I do if there were no nurses?

This is definetly something that doctors should do - is think about what would happen if there weren't any nurses. Same goes for some of the nurses that treat CNA's like dirt - what if there weren't such thing as CNA's or PCT's?

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So what if docs read this? Maybe if one takes this back to their board and complains about how we talk about them, the others will set him straight.

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Personally, i thought your post was funny. & if some docs come and quote it and chuck it in there forum, meh, their fault for quoting out of context. Plus those docs should know never to beleive everything you see on the internet. After all If everything on the internet was true, we'd all be using those "natural" diet pills and north america wouln't be an overweight/obese nation and i'd be winning ipods, tv's and trips to hawaii from all those contests that i just seem to win. I seem to have a new win from contests i never signed up for every day!!! lol

sorry bout the tangent,lol

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

I feel for you. We used to have a surgical resident who would: fall asleep in your ear; give you a vocabulary lesson; give orders that he would flatly deny he gave when, on rounds the next morning, he would be questioned about (since he gave them in his sleep, they didn't always make a lot of sense). The other docs thought he was a jerk, too.

The jerk has a boss.

Keep a log, "dr. IMAJ called that pts bp was 75/??, and UO was 10ml last hour. doc stated it was 4am, and we could just wait til am rounds". "pt c/o severe pain, diaphoretic, bp, hr up, restless, dr IMAJ called, did not want to come in to assess or give orders. Called again w/worsening symptoms, doc again refused to come."

Give copies to the Chief of your service, NM. You could also do this using an "Occurance/Incident Report".

If you think the pt is in grave danger, and you can't get IMAJ to respond w/o sending security to his call room and dragging him over, call the Chief. Yes, in the middle of the night.

Like I said, been there, done that!

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I've never worked in a teaching hospital with residents......if the one on call doesn't respond or is inappropriate, is there someone up the chain that can be called or do you have to wait until morning for TPTB?

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I work in a teaching hospital with the whole gamut of med students, sub-i, interns, residents etc. Thank God here, we have a computer charting and the docs have to put the orders in (we can't) or they won't get done. This eliminates the "I didn't tell you to do that" stuff I used to get at the community hospital sometimes. The tolerability of the "baby docs" varies from month to month. Some months it is GREAT, other months we want to KILL.

As scribble below mentioned, go up the chain of command for your hospital! For me it would be intern-resident-fellow-attending. I have never had any qualms about calling an attending if necessary. Sometimes I go directly to the attending.

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

Yes, there IS someone you can call if the resident is being a unsafe. You call the attending. So long as your reason is good and your worries and concerns are valid, it isn't a problem. The hospital I worked at supported this and actually gave recognition to the nurses who went up the chain of command in an appropriate matter. Guess what the award was for? PATIENT SAFETY!

I've worked in a teaching hospital before and have had my fair share of problem residents and interns. I also had a very good relationship with the attending (having worked with him when he was a resident and intern). So if I paged him in the middle of the night because Dr. So-and-So was wanting to wait until morning rounds on a child who was majoring bleeding out and whose B/P was 40/palp (true story), I didn't have a bit of trouble. But BOY did that resident get in trouble for trying to pull the "let's wait for AM rounds so we can make a team decision" trick! Ummm, no! How about YOU make a decision now so the kid MIGHT live to morning rounds?!

I will say, having the resident finally come down to the child's room and trying to play it off like he didn't know what how sick the kids really was priceless. Especially when the parent's yelled at him saying, "Where have YOU been? All we know is for the past hour and a half this nurse has been trying to get you down here and at the same time doing the best she can to keep our baby alive!"

I do not like to see students, residents, or internd belittled or yelled at in general, but in the case above I can say that I was at the point where I didn't really care. All I wanted was for him to do his job.

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