Singing the praises of AWESOME doctors!!! =)

[NurseCard]

I was just reading the thread from "doctorwife" and wanted to start my own thread about AWESOME doctors. Who are some of the great doctors that you work with/for, and why?

We have a neurosurgeon on our staff who is just the BEST. He's awesome because he's a fantastic doctor in terms of skills... he really does a great job with his patients and they really tend to do very well and go home in a rather short time. He is very very thorough, and he leaves standing orders for just about EVERYTHING that we could need to give his patients so that we don't have to call him for every little thing. However, if he does need to be called, whether it's nine o clock at night or three o clock in the morning, he is always VERY courteous, very respectful of us, and he's just a sweet guy. He is available 24/7 practically for his patients and doesn't even mind if they call him from their hospital room! He is just wonderful and we are SO blessed to have him. We have a "doctor of the year" award every year (as well as a "nurse of the year" award given to one of us by the doctors), and he's the one that I'm nominating this year.

Then there is another doctor who I would almost swear that "doctorwife" was talking about. =) He also works with a group and is also fairly new, and he is young. He is GREAT. Just a sweet, sweet, respectful and kind person. He is so funny when he returns a page! He is like "This is ** ******, somebody PAGED ME!" The way he says it makes me think of... "Mighty Mouse is on the wayyyy! Here I come to save the dayyyy!" :rotfl:

Don't get me wrong, we have other doctors at my place who are pretty great, but those two are the ones who immediately come to mind when I think of great docs. :)

[ShayRN]

You all will never believe this but I swear to God it is true. I started working for a primary doc, Dr. B, when I was 17. He supported my decision to go back to nursing school and allowed me the flexability to do so. THEN when I got pregnant with my dd, I went into his office in my 8th month (I had worked for him for 12 years by this time) and told him that I was going to put my dd in daycare across the street. I was planning on breastfeeding and running over every couple of hours to do so... he started shaking his head and my heart sank. He said to me, NOWAY are you taking that tiny little baby to daycare, we have room here, just bring her with you. So that is what I did:) The patients LOVED it, for the first nine monthes of my dd's life she came to work with me, then this wonderful, kind man had a stroke and had to retire. After we closed up, I still went to his house and did some work for him. His wife still calls me with updates, last I heard they just went to Scotland for vacation. (He is hard of hearing now so phone conversations are very difficult for him:crying2: )

[Gompers, BSN, RN]

I've worked with some pretty good doctors in my time...

One was a pediatric surgeon at the children's hospital where I worked during nursing school. If a patient was really unstable after surgery, he'd follow them to the unit and stay until the baby was stable. A handful of times, I saw him sleep on a cot, six feet away from the patient, just in case he was needed. He wouldn't even go to the call room because he felt it was too far away if there was an emergency. He'd also sneak into the step-down room in the NICU and hold the grower-feeder babies if they were crying. I recently saw him on a Discovery Health Channel show about pediatric surgery. He was exactly like I remembered him - after the risky surgery was over, he was filmed running down the hall, bumping into people, because he was in such a hurry to find the parents and tell them everything went well.

I currently work in a teaching hospital, and we always have at least 6 or 7 docs doing their 3-year neonatalogy fellowhips at one time. Two of them really stick ou tin my mind. One was a really good doc, period. He was great clinically, great with the parents, great with the staff. He just knew his stuff. He was also very realistic with the families and really supported them and talked to them as much as they needed. I'll never forget him talking to a mom for an hour about how her son's lungs were too fragile to keep him alive, and that there was nothing we could do. He said he was sorry, and he really truly meant it. He was crying as he walked away. A year later, we got a letter from that mom thanking us for caring for her baby, and she mentioned that doc and how his tears helped her make peace.

Another fellow...it wasn't her personality that was awesome, it was her clinical skills. If you had a sick baby, you breathed a sigh of relief when you found out she was on call. We used to joke that she could reintubate a baby by throwing the ETT from her call room. She made it all look so easy. She'd come to your bedside to start an arterial line, after four other docs had failed, and she'd have the thing in before you even had time to grab a flush or even some tape! Same thing with difficult IVs. She just had the magic touch.

[Gompers, BSN, RN]

Dr V (though I never call him doctor, he's a first name only kind of guy) is one of the best neonatologists I've ever worked with. Not only competent clinically, but great with parents, always polite, always takes the time to do the little things that make parents feel better, remembers everyone's name, never complains about being called in the middle of the night, and he even brings donuts in on Saturdays. It doesn't get any better than that. If he wasn't gay, I swear I would stalk him;)

That reminds me of this one resident we had a few years back. He was really very good for just being a resident, very confident and knowledgable. He was great with the parents and the staff, just a very nice guy. He had a handful of toddlers at home, and he was so good with the babies. He'd talk to them while he did his assessments, change and weigh their diapers, then reposition or swaddle them back up and make sure they had their pacifiers and were quiet before he moved on to the next baby. Most of the residents are single 26-27 year-olds who have no idea what to do with a baby! It didn't help that he was absolutely drop dead gorgeous, too. One of our nurses, married with three kids, went to MRI with him one day to have a baby get a full-body scan. They were gone for hours, and when she got back, she said it was the best shift of her life, and boy was her husband in for a happy surpirse later that night! :chuckle

Last year, I rolled out of bed one day and drove to the convenience store to grab a gallon of milk for my cereal. I'm talking dirty t-shirt, sweatpants, messy hair, no make-up - the works. Of course I ran into Dr. Gorgeous - who knew he lived a mile from me? :imbar

[Town & Country]

A year later, we got a letter from that mom thanking us for caring for her baby, and she mentioned that doc and how his tears helped her make peace.

Great thread....nice to hear about the GOOD docs.

[tencat]

I'm just a student, but during clinical I got to work with a great urologist. My patient for the day had continuous bladder irrigation after a prostectomy, and his foley bag filled up constantly, so I was emptying the bag at least twice an hour. One time I went into the room and the doctor was pulling on gloves and reaching for the foley bag. I told him "I'll do that for you." He just shook his head and said "No, that's ok." and continued emptying the bag into graduated cylinders. He was so nice about the whole thing. He also addressed me when talking to the patient and asked my opinion about the patient's output and general wellbeing after surgery. I had told him I was a student, so he knew it before he chatted with the patient, but I thought it was great of him to include me in the discussion. Great guy!

[MamaTheNurse, BSN, RN]

I worked for an ortho surgeon (Dr F) who used to send personally written get well cards to his patients post-op after calling them at home the first day after they were discharged - he never hesitated to give patients his home phone - he said in all the years he did that, no one called - maybe just knowing that they could talk to him personally was enough to reassure patients and keep them calm, who knows............

he was nice to floor nurses and a dream to work for in the office - he deliberately saw less patients per day than his partners because he wanted to not be rushed especially with people who were considering surgery.........

he got his dream job in another state and moved away and his partners eliminated my job - it's been 4 years and I miss him still!!!

I've worked (and still work) with some other awesome docs - too many to mention them all....

[JBudd, MSN]

Dr. K in the ER. Champions nurses, does for himself, cheerful. Told a private doc who came in to do a procedure in one of the ER bays off, when the guy was having a hissy fit because the ER nurse wouldn't stand there and be ready to hand him stuff "just in case". Dr. K told him the nurses didn't have time to one to one for him, if he wanted somebody like that he should have brought his office nurse with him, then answered him that if the ER docs needed something, they just got it themselves!

When I needed a specialist referral out of state for my son and didn't know who to call, Dr.K called the NICU where his own baby had been and asked the doc there who she recommended, and answered her "I called you guys because of the great care you gave my baby, so I trust your opinions", and got me names. :loveya:

[Little Panda RN, ASN, RN]

What a wonderful thread! It is so heartwarming during this holiday season to hear all these wonderful stories. "Lets put our hands :yelclap: together in praise of these truly wonderful and amazing doctors!!!!!!

[Annor]

The doctor I work with is very cool...most of his pt's LOVE him....he is considerate ,and a excellent plastic surgeon...but most of all he is a HUMAN BEING....I am sure you know what I mean.

Plus...he is a good boss:rotfl:

[perfectbluebuildings, BSN, RN]

Our two pediatric pulmonologists... they are so kind and caring with the families and respectful of the nurses, wonderful people. My preceptor told me of a time she was caring for a kid with a chest tube and the tube came out or slipped or something, I'm not sure, and this doc was just so calm and careful and not flustered at all, still his same kind gentle self through the whole thing and explaining each thing he was doing. There is another private pediatric group whose patients come to our hospital a lot, husband and wife team, and they always call the parents in the hospital room to see how the kid is doing and reassure them. One I encountered just this past week, just briefly... a renal doc, not with our hospital, whose patient is in for GI issues, and his home med dosages got messed up on the admission form. (They were safe doses still but not his usual doses). The GI doctors were reluctant to make any changes to the orders at that time since they didn't know anything about his renal issues. The mom called the renal doctor, and he was so gentle and friendly with her and then with me, and happened to mention "oh by the way my wife just got out of the hospital after having a heart attack!!" And he still took all the time in the world to make sure things were spelled out correctly for this kid. It's wonderful to get to work with doctors like these!!!

[MamaTheNurse, BSN, RN]

I forgot this story - I worked with an OB (who was also my personal OB/GYN) and we had some freaky people one night with the lady in pre-term labour - lady was 20 weeks and asked the doc (at a Catholic hospital) if he could just give her an abortion because she was "tired" of having a "sore back" (there's a lot more to this but that's another post) - just an example of how bizarre these people were - anyhoo, on day shift the next day, the husband actually referred to me as "that waitress we had last night" - Dr L very calmly and politely ripped the guy a new butt-hole - first, he defended me personally and my nursing skills and then extended the defense to every nurse on the unit and told the guy that if he wasn't happy with the care his wife was receiving, he (the doc) would be more than happy to call around himself to find a hospital to have his wife transferred to - that shut the guy up - we think they burned their bridges at all of their local hospitals because they actually lived too far from our hospital for them to be local and they weren't on vacation

my friends relayed the exchange word for word and I was touched - Dr L has never ever told me this story and I worked with him for years, he delivered both of my children and performed surgery on me twice - what a guy!!

[nurturing_angel]

Great thread!

I have a few doctors I absolutely loved.....

Dr. K. Family doc who would sit with dying pts and hold their hand and cry with the families.

Dr. C OB/GYN. The kindest man God ever let graduate from med school. His pts loved him so much that when he died in a freak accident at the age of 49, he had over 3,000 sobbing women at the funeral.

Dr. I My Internist. Very intelligent. Very kind. He is very honest with his pts regarding thier prognosis, but he does it in such a kind and loving way. I stand in total awe and respect of the man.

Dr. Z A general surgeon our hospital was just unlucky enough to lose to another area of the country. A excellent surgeon, kind and supportive of nurses, well likes by all.

Dr. J and Dr. P Two family docs who actually protected and stood up for nurses who were being treated badly by pts and/or their families. Dr. P even had one lady removed from the hospital and requested she not be allowed back. She was barred as a visitor from that day on.

Dr. H A OB/GYN who scared the dickens out of me when I first started working in OB. He was always nice to me but he totally intimidated me cause he seemed so knowledgeable. After a few months I finally knew that he was so "overbearing" because he was learning to trust me with his pts. He became my teacher during that few months. I respect him totally now and think he is GREAT!

Its nice to think about the nice doctors for awhile. Thanks for the thread.

Vickie:balloons: