Maybe I'm just sheltered...

shygirl · Jun 2, 2002

Shay, I'm sorry to say but you should not get so upset over this. What do you care? If the site is causing you to become angry, go away from there! You know by now that some MD's feel superior and they always will. Why don't you try indulging them? My mom always said to me " You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar" We have this MD at our facility who is a notorious chauvinist. We all decided to be super nice to him. You know what? He is so sweet now to us!Gilda

fedupnurse · Jun 2, 2002

I hear you Shay but I, unfortunately, cannot say I am shocked. It didn't surprise me at all. I work in a teaching hospital and many of our medical residents are foreigners: Middle East, Poland, Russia, etc. There are many that I truly enjoy working with and then there are those few that give the whole bunch a bad name. I call it the second year chip. SOmetimes this occurs during their second rotation thru the ICU during their first year of residency, but it very frequently happens when they become second years. All of the sudden they know it all and how dare we question them. Well when you are ordering a sentinel dose of Atropine, I WILL question it. When the patient has a pH of 6.8 and a bicarb of 5 and has no BP and the levo isn't working due to the acidity of her system and your answer (a 3rd year resident) is "well she is not acutely shocky so let's just give her 1 amp of bicarb" I will call the attending MD and get an appropriate order. When you are an attending doc (an anesthesiologist) and you are walking thru the unit and there is a patient with an acute bronchospasm who requires IMMEDIATE intubation and I say hey doc we have an emergency here, we need your help and you say "I have to go see my first preop" and keep on walking, I will write up a QA (which was thrown away, apprently). When you as a doc sit at the nurses station and bellow for a nurse just becasue you are too lazy to get up off your @ss and get the chart yourself, I will not acknowledge your existance as a human being unless I absolutely have to. I am not your personal slave.

Don't get me wrong. There are a handful of docs I would trust with my life. After working night shift for as long as I have, I see the double standard of how they treat day shift and then how they treat us. It is simply dispicable! If I call you for a tylenol order at 3 am, I can understand you'd be a little pi$$y but when I am calling you about your patient who is dying don't yell at me! I will yell back!!

So, in summary, I have met more than my fair share of these jerks in my time. Many don't last more than a year because their cocky attitudes get in the way of learning. Many also come around and realize that we are the reason why patients are in the hospital. They are there for NURSING CARE. I go out of my way to help docs I like to work with. But the ones I don't like are on their own.

Sorry for the length here, but like Shay, their attitudes really pi$$ed me off too. You'd think they were hospital administrators!!

fergus51 · Jun 2, 2002

All it will take is one screwup on their part that is caught by a nurse for them to realize they don't know it all. We have a couple bad docs, one we call Dr. God, but most aren't this stupid anymore. I think medical schools like to build up their students, but once they get into the real world they see that they don't know everything.

Zee_RN, BSN, RN · Jun 2, 2002

Sounds like a web site to avoid. You're not going to see anything you like and it's just gonna piss you off. Avoid it; it's not worth it.

Our third-year residents are going to be finishing their rotation in a couple of weeks. One of the residents came up to me last night--it was her last night on call. She said to me "I need to ask you a question, please be honest...Am I good doctor? I feel so inadequate at times! How did I do? Am I ready?" Who did she ask? A nurse. Needless to say, she's gonna be a great doc in the private practice she'll be entering! And I told her so. Those who question themselves from time to time and seek help when needed are the best.

Dplear · Jun 2, 2002

Where is this forum?....I would love to go and pursue some of messsages and add my own little bit of wisdom....such as residents ordering 3 TIMES the correct dosage of vanc ona 40 day iold and trying to blame the nurse for taking the order off wrong....to bad he could not change what he wrote...hehehe...burned his own ass...and a nurse saved his butt from a lawsuit.

Dave

shay · Jun 2, 2002

Dave, I pm'd you the link. :devil:

And for the rest of y'all, yes, you're right, I should just avoid the place. I went there out of curiosity from the nurse-bashing post huggietoes posted (huggietoes didn't bash, s/he cut and pasted a post from that student doctor site) just to see what the heck these idiots were saying, and I was honestly FLOORED.

I mean, yeah, I've come across the occasional I'm-a-doctor-therefore-I-am-God MD, but really....it's RARE. And usually they were residents and it was only a matter of time before a nurse chewed them a new one. I guess it just really grates my nerves that these student doctors aren't being taught any better. I mean, MY GOD....how many times have YOU all saved a doc's butt?? HUNDREDS!! I know I have personally had many good saves, ESPECIALLY in OB!!

I just don't understand how anyone can think nurses are 'just stupid, period' to quote one especially ignorant a$$. Grrrrr. Okay, well, I'm gonna take y'alls advice and stay the hell away from that site. I just hope and pray the little butthead that was calling nurses stupid isn't my first cousin, who is an anesthesia intern at Northwestern.

live4today, RN · Jun 2, 2002

No matter what those resident med students say or do to a nurse, we know the REAL DEAL when it comes time to SAVE THE PATIENT, don't we! We, the nurse, get the LAST WORD when we know that THEY are WRONG, and WE are RIGHT! Let them mouth off in their little world all they want to because when push comes to shove, guess who will be doing the shoving? Yeah, baby!!! We, the nurses, will be letting them know just how LITTLE they really know, and it will be us who come to their rescue, so let 'em gloat all they want. We nurses know how to bring them down off of their white cloud! :chuckle :nurse:

Peeps Mcarthur · Jun 3, 2002

Those docs are just bitter about not being able to make it as nurses and having to settle for second best for the rest of their careers.:roll

capgirl · Jun 3, 2002

When I worked at the BIG teaching hospital in the area, we used to say it took 8 years for MDs to become human again.

Now I work in the little teaching hospital, the residents thank us profusely for all our help, and never give us any god complex attitudes.

I guess little is better (in this instance anyway) !!!

kids · Jun 3, 2002

I'd like that link also please.

Maybe some of aught'a mosey on over there and take a look around...not to stir anything up mind you:stone

-jt · Jun 3, 2002

Do medical students even work at that hour? I think theyll be in for a good dose of reality shock when they become interns & then theyll be singing a different tune about us by the time theyre residents & have learned from us. It seems that some medical students dont even read the literature from their own profession. Dont bother arguing with them. Just pass on this MDs comments & give them something to think about. It sounds like they wont listen to thing a nurse has to say but another MD might make an impact:

Recently published in the American Medical News - the newspaper for America's physicians:

"Hailing one of health care's priceless resources -- Nurses"

Commentary By Michael Greenberg, MD,

AMNews contributor. Jan. 28, 2002.

"The U.S. Dept. of the Interior spends millions of dollars to protect our nation's endangered species. It writes long lists of plants and animals whose populations are dangerously low and hires scientists to figure out ways to increase their numbers.

Too bad they haven't turned their attention to Nurses.

In the fragile ecosystem of medical care, nurses are the ones who create the protective environment essential to the well-being of both doctors and patients.

We cannot function without them.

Their job is to provide knowledge, comfort, care and compassion.

But, lest nurses be offended by my comparing them to the plant and animal life that are on the endangered species list, the metaphor stops here. My point is that it seems society expends greater resources and energy on the protection of birds and flowers than on protecting the viability of the nursing profession.

Throughout my training, it was as many nurses as doctors who turned me from a green medical student into a full-fledged physician.

At times, nurses were my primary source of learning.

Because the housestaff was overwhelmed, an operating room nurse took the time to teach me the fine points of suturing.

When she saw I had mastered the technique, she put the needle holder into my hand during a procedure. "The student is ready to close," she informed the surgeon.

My initial assignment during my first post-graduate year as a pediatric resident was the newborn nursery. Not yet a father, and uncomfortable in my awareness of how little I really knew despite the magical initials that had been recently appendaged to my name, I admitted my fears to the head nurse.

Her smile put me at ease. "We're going to teach this young doctor how not to drop babies," she announced to the other nurses in her unit. And by the end of the first week, I was a pro.

Even more frightening to me were the high-risk nursery and pediatric intensive care units. But by admitting my ignorance and asking for help from the nurses in each area through which I rotated, I felt myself respected and supported. And I believe the patients were better cared for because of the partnership I created with the nursing staff. At least they prevented me from killing anybody.

During my dermatology residency, nurses I met while moonlighting in attendings' private offices taught me medical techniques and also provided me with an education in business and practice promotion.

A significant part of the success of my more than 20 years in practice is directly attributable to the wonderful nurses who have worked with me. Along with my office staff, they maintain the "sacred space" in which patients and I interact.

Nurses are full-fledged partners in the health care equation, offering not only their compassionate perspective but also their eyes, ears and hearts.

I am indebted to them for the many times they have prevented me from doing or saying something foolish, or worse, harming a patient.

Hospitals and office practices have difficulty filling vacancies as nurses discover they can earn higher salaries in other professions. But beyond the money, nurses are disappearing because as much misery as managed care has brought to doctors, they have been affected more than we have.

Nurses traditionally have been the human interface between the hospital and patient. While our time with patients was measured in minutes, nurses spent hours with patients. They were the ones who knew how patients were really doing and informed us at the first signs of trouble.

With the advent of managed care, many nurses have been relegated to shuffling papers and recording information. And as much as we didn't become doctors to argue with insurance companies, nurses didn't earn their degrees to push pencils.

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for the problem. Raising awareness of the crisis is a good start.

Nurses are a priceless health care resource that is not being renewed or protected. And if we as doctors don't do something to reverse the situation, both our patients and our own profession will suffer. Let's not wait until nurses become extinct."

http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews/amn_02/edca0128.htm

Dr. Greenberg is a dermatologist in Elk Grove Village, Ill. and author of the novel A Man of Sorrows (http://www.anovelvision.com/). You can contact him by e-mail [email protected]

Responses in Letters to the Editor - Feb. 25, 2002

http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews/amn_02/edlt0225.htm

Letters to the Editor - Feb. 18, 2002

http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews/amn_02/edlt0218.htm