Some Responses to INTERNal Suffering

It seems that while I was away some of my readers got a chance to sift through the Friday Ten Random Intern scut posts. In fact, some bacame upset with my impatience, my lack of respect for the fresh M.Ds. Responses included some of the following:

You are such a narrow minded, obnoxious jerk to take revenge on the hapless intern. Or are you taking it out on the weaker party for what you suffered when you were an intern yourself?

Wow, I hope this all makes you feel better about yourself

Reading your blog entries over the past few months, it doesn't seem like you have much respect or camaraderie for the nursing staff you work with- why is that?

I would like to remind everyone that the "hapless" intern discussed is a 25-30 year old adult who has an MD.

Each Resident cares for twenty to thirty patients for whom he is directly responsible. That is a lot of patients, think about it.

The math: Resident gets one hour to round on everyone so that's almost impossible. therefore, I am dependent on my interns to report back about the sickest patients. Since each intern cares for only 5-10 patients they should be able to see them all before rounds and warn me if a someone's condition is worsening.

The "hapless" intern (remember, 25-30 year old with a "medical" degree) forgot to mention that his patient was UNRESPONSIVE!!!!

That is a pretty large "forgot". That's Mega-LARGE.

Of course I spoke to him about it, of course I pointed out the obvious. No, this is not about how I suffered when I was an intern because my internship was rather easy. This is about responsibility. He just started his internship and I felt he was a little too lackidazical so he needed to be put back in line.

As for respect for the staff. There are good nurses and bad ones. There are good doctors and there are lazy doctors. I know who's who.

What I am trying to get across is that in our line of work mistakes or forgetfullness can have extremely serious consequences. Once you've witnessed a few of these you never really think about this job the same way again. If that's what I have to do to make sure the "hapless" MD understands that "nonresponsive" is a serious medical condition than that's exactly what I'll do!