Doc rage

fedupnurse · May 19, 2002

Fergus,

I work in America and unfortuately, it isn't much better here. I work in a large hospital and there are so few docs that actually care about their patients that it is sickening. They are in it for the money, pure and simple. I had to call the director of my unit (ICU) at around 11 pm one night because a vented patient under his care was a full code and was desating. The patient was not going to recover. He gave me an attitude for calling him. I said I have already documented that this guys sat is 80% and it'll look bad for you if you don't give me an order. He said write what you want and don't call me again (I hear that a lot). So I wrote no orders recd. Dr.___is aware of patients resp distress and desaturation. Forget about it if you are a ward (no insurance) patient. They get screwed even worse. They are the residents guinea pigs! Unnecassary and painful tests. I honestly don't know how they sleep at night! It is so very frustrating. My grandfather was a doctor. He was a Genearl Practitioner in Jersey City, NJ. Got mugged, held up at knife point, the whole 9 yrads and shortly before he died in 1980 he said to me, "The doctors today are going into this field for all the wrong reasons. They only want the money." If his patient s couldn't pay, they didn't. He turns over in his grave on a regular basis.

A couple of months ago we had a patient with a sudden onset acute bronchspasm. He required immediate intubation. An open heart anesthesiologist was walking by the room and I said oh good, we could really use your help in here. He said I have to see my first pre-op. I'll be down the other end (of the unit) if you need me. I said I am telling you we need you in here now to tube this guy. He just kept walking away. Can't wait till he asks me for a patients chart: "Have to go see my patient". What a jerk.

We can report these guys to the State Board of Medical Examiners. They've gotten more than one letter from me regarding unscrupulous docs who have no business practicing. Unfortunately, nothing ever changes and the public is kept in the dark about who the bad doctors are. This is another part of our system we must change.

That's why we are all going to work at AllNurses Hospital! No slime bucket docs are allowed there.

Best of luck to you, don't know if the US will be better ot worse. Guess it will depend on where you work.

boobaby42 · May 19, 2002

It makes me sick too. I have found my family a new doctor, one that still cares about patients more than money. He has an office in my small hometown. I really hadn't thought about him much until he did the unbelievable. My great aunts and uncle live alone. They all had high fevers and decreased fluid intake. One was admitted. As Dr. Taylor made rounds on her, he asked about the others sick at home. When he found out their condition, he volunteered to drop by on his way home and check on them.. I have never known a physician to do a house call unless it was for another physician's family! Not in 21 years of nursing have I seen this much compassion, especially toward older, poor people. From what this doc knew, these people would pay with fresh eggs or something. No insurance.

I changed docs the next day. So did my sister. Now, we are receiving top notch care from a top notch team. My 11 year old nephew has suffered since 18 months of age with asthma. After seeing Dr. Taylor, he hasn't coughed a bit. He listened to my sister, REALLY listened. What a difference a heart makes.

cargal · May 19, 2002

All I hear is that their malpractice insurance is sky high (the CAT Fund here in PA?) and that doctors can't afford to practice anymore. They live in 600,000 houses and up and all drive Beamers. Feel sorry for them.

Enabled · May 19, 2002

Recently, we had a post TAHBSO come to our med/surg floor as she was having some difficulty breathing. The OB=GYN went into the room and told her the reason she had pneumonia was that she stayed in bed like a whale out of the water. How cruel. Well, it was time to remove the sutures and this same doc pulls a pocket knife out of his pocket and uses it to remove the sutures. How unprofessional, unsanitary and all those other things. That was not the highlight. Her incision started draining and he said to her that someone else would have to clean it up since she had fired him from the case. Well, the drainage stunk to high heavens and she ended up back in surgery and the idiot had nicked her bowel and she was draining fecal material. From surgery she went directly to ICU for a couple of weeks. This supposed "medicine man" when called said all kinds of sexual inuendos to the nurses. I don't know how the nurses took it in the delivery suite. Well, the nurses on the med/surg floor began writing this doc up the minute he started. There was a nurse in the room when all the incidents happened and was horrified. He also never washed his hands which is so common with most physicians. No wonder patients are having longer stays in the hospital because their own docs were making them sick. This patient was informed by the nursing staff that she could find another doctor. She then told us that in the office the doc said the only reason she was having problems was that she wasn't getting enough of it. He went into the room following the firing and called her a beached whale and told her someone else was going to have to clean it up. I am enraged that this happened in this day in age. A new OB-GYN took over the case and he as well as the hospital lawyer saw she had everything she needed for even after discharge. I hope she sues him for every dime as he was totally incompetent I do not know if he has been sanctioned by the hospital as yet but I would kick him off the staff immediately if not sooner but it will probably have to go before tome type of board as yet as well as I hope the state licensing board.

fedupnurse · May 19, 2002

Isn't it sad. I saw a doc on my way out of work an hour ago and our unit sec. was giving him a hard time in a kidding way (they are friends). I said to her don't harass him! He is one of the 3 doctors on staff that I actually like and respect! He said "WOW. That is high praise coming from you. You have some pretty rigid standards". My standards are you treat your patients like they are the person you love the most in this world. That's not rigid. That's how I treat my patients with rare exception (the guy who murdered his wife in front of the daughter he raped a couple of years before that I had no use for.) It is so sad that the public cow tows to these doctors and gives this automatic respect just because they have MD or DO after their names! Make them earn respect just like everyone else does. I have found that by and large, most of the docs I deal with on a regular basis would cheat on their spouses with a mere moments notice, couldn't give a rat's butt about self pay patients, surgeons who aren't even in the hospital while surgey is being performed by first year residents, doctors that have to be threatened to come in at 2 am because if they don't put that pacer in the pt. will die! I had a 25 year old around Christmas this past year who nearly exsanguinated because the cover macho a))hole orthopod didn't feel like interrupting his weekend by bringing her to the OR. She was bleeding out. Finally I told the parents to call the service and tell them to put them thru to the surgeon who did the procedure and if they didn't they would sue. Fortunately they did put them thru and the doc came in. She went to the OR and didn't drip even one drop of blood the rest of my shift. The other doc said this was "normal". I told the parents I would be happy to appear for them in court. They said we might take you up on that. I'd go in a heart beat. The secrecy about impaired and incompetent docs has got to stop. The Boards of Medical Examiners and the AMA had better wake up and smell the coffee!

I am off my soap box now, let's return to our regular programming.

Enabled · May 19, 2002

They even recently proved that docs are in it for the money. A recent national news story said that less med students are going into general surgery because they end up with the lower end of the economic scale and during training they do not want to be on call 80 hours a week so they are now having more specialist so that they can have 9 to 5 office hours with an hour for lunch and do surgery when they want so that it will not take away from their time. Then why the heck did they go into medicine in the first place if it wasn't for the money. It is well known that specialist can charge through the roof and if you don't have insurance or the money in the bank that forget it you are out of luck.

fergus51 · May 19, 2002

I used to work in Washington and know about bad hospitals there. I am just getting so frustrated here because we elected the Liberal party to power after years of NDP rule. I didn't like the NDP, but the Liberals are butchering the system. They have legislated a contract on nurses (after we voted oer 90% in favor of a strike), ripped up auxillary staffs' contracts, closed hospitals and hospital beds in other places (we are losing an entire floor) and even old age homes are on the chopping block. Meanwhile docs aren't happy with their average 50 000$ raise (because we need to have better paying positions that the ENTIRE REST OF THE COUNTRY!!!!) so they are "withdrawing their services". They had an ad on tv Tues, and never mentionned money ONCE. I am so mad that docs are turning out to be no better than politicians. I don't understand why they think everyone needs to tighten their belts to save health care except them.

Brownms46 · May 19, 2002

Originally posted by boobaby42
It makes me sick too. I have found my family a new doctor, one that still cares about patients more than money. He has an office in my small hometown. I really hadn't thought about him much until he did the unbelievable. My great aunts and uncle live alone. They all had high fevers and decreased fluid intake. One was admitted. As Dr. Taylor made rounds on her, he asked about the others sick at home. When he found out their condition, he volunteered to drop by on his way home and check on them.. I have never known a physician to do a house call unless it was for another physician's family! Not in 21 years of nursing have I seen this much compassion, especially toward older, poor people. From what this doc knew, these people would pay with fresh eggs or something. No insurance.
I changed docs the next day. So did my sister. Now, we are receiving top notch care from a top notch team. My 11 year old nephew has suffered since 18 months of age with asthma. After seeing Dr. Taylor, he hasn't coughed a bit. He listened to my sister, REALLY listened. What a difference a heart makes.

Thankfully I have seen and worked with such an MD! This MD was a female who worked in a rural clinic...and I was working a contract, when one day she was informed that one of her pts...was extremely ill at home. She packed up 1/4 of the clinic...including lab...and we drove in her SUV to the pts home. Where we proceeded to set up clinc right there! This was a male pt. who refused to go to the hospital...which was about 20 miles away! She would stock pile samples from drug reps...to give to her pts...she knew couldn't afford to pay her! I mean she had a Iarge wall locker full of meds! I loved working with her...I mean she was as manaic as the day was long...some didn't like her...but she was a true physican in every sense of the word! Thank God...there are still some of the good ones...still left out there!

fedupnurse · May 19, 2002

Hey Fergus,

What are the hospital execs in Canada paid? Boobaby and Brownms, my doctor of 30 some odd years retired a couple of years ago. He was a GP. Everything from delivery to death. He was the type who made house calls and really cared about his patients. I was able to find another like him. He's my age so if he stays in medicine I'll have him for life I hope. Really good ones are so hard to find.

Our execs get six to seven figure salaries with perks. Lots of perks. Just wondering if it is the same up North.

MollyMo · May 19, 2002

I worked at a hospital with a cardiovascular surgeon who expected us to tell him if he should come in to see a patient who had a change in condition. I called him one night because a patient was crashing. He asked me if he needed to come in. I told him "this is the clinical picture. You make up your own mind if you need to come in." When he got there, he started asking questions. One of my answers was "I don't know" which was the truth. He turned around and raised his fist as if to punch me and yelled "What do you mean, you don't know?!" I had to call the nursing supervisor to step in between us. He then had the nerve to have the nurse manager to call a staff meeting to berate us and tell what he expected from the nursing staff. I let him know that it wasn't my job to tell him what to do. If he didn't want to see his patient through a crisis, that was his choice not mine. And I also let him know that if he raised his fist at me again one of us was going to jail and he was going to the undertaker because I refused to be hit by anybody.

fergus51 · May 19, 2002

Fedupnurse, they get six figure salaries with lovely severance packages. The gov't recently amalgamated our smaller health reagions into larger ones and laid off a bunch of administrators with their severance packages in the hundreds of thousands. The gov't said they couldn't break contracts made by the previous gov't, but then ripped up the auxilliary staffs' contract. Hmmm... double standard anyone?