Wednesday, April 9, 2008

News From the Front

Medical students are useless. We just are - adding extra work to resident's daily to do lists, getting in the way during procedures and rounds, and having to be accounted for on a regular basis all leads to a rather mundane and useless person.

Yet for all the tomfoolery that goes on with training med students the majority of residents/ attendings/ nurses are nice and considerate to make you not feel completely ridiculous. Most. A nurse from the L&D ward was down in the ICU yesterday and she brought with her the mentality that I hated on that floor: get out of my way you useless piece of shit!

Twice I was attacked by her for just looking in a patient's chart (which I had to defend by stating it was my patient, so back off), I witnessed her badger the radiology tech for HIPPA violations since she was walking around with patient labels on her sleeves (which most people do when they're actually, you know, up and moving to get their work done and not sitting behind a PC all day), and several times this behemoth of a woman got after the residents. Once she even went so far as to tell my senior "You need to get off my computer and get back onto yours!" The resident yielded, laughing outwardly at the farce this woman was making of her position, and I smiled as the nurse pulled up her important work - shoe shopping online.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

the types of nurses in which you speak of are the reason why millions of kids are afraid of needles... that and the whole pain feeling

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid the creature of which you speak is all too common. It's not just doctors that are capable of having a Godcomplex as many nurses do. In my experience, I have run into more nurses with that attitude than doctors. You describe it perfectly. I have been on the receiving end of that look many times by nurses. The "get out of my way you useless piece of shit" look, the only thing is, I have received that look as a patient.

Anonymous said...

what a bitch

Anonymous said...

A tutorial group i was in today got yelled at by a nurse for not washing our hands after we left a patient's room (the patient had MRSA). She said she only saw 1 student of 6 wash his hands. We ALLLLLL washed our hands. She must have just seen the last person do it and decided to lash out at us for whatever reason.

JeanMac said...

There are so many good (older & newer grad) nurses but it takes one to ruin a day or ward!
If you are unlucky enough to spend a bit of time around her, you will see that her intimidation allows her to continue. No one reports her and she goes along in her unhappy way being a turd.

Doc's Girl said...

Unfortunately, regardless of what you do, you will always be the bad guy--the staff on my floor are unaware of resident boyfriend and have told me in detail how much they hate doctors (for pretty much no reason at all).

It's all very interesting to listen to...and a bit frustrating, as well...

Anonymous said...

MSG - I know that feeling of being useless as a medical student. You'll discover in a few months that medical students can be quite valuable: having the time to notice details about a patient that nobody else paid attention to, writing notes on five patients out of a census of 20 (very valuable), writing post-op notes, collecting data - it doesn't seem like a lot to you right now, but to me at least as an intern, I really appreciate the medical students' help, even for small things. Also, I know this doesn't apply to you any more ;), but the third years are so fresh and eager, it can sometimes be motivating.

Isaac said...

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