August 4, 2009
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Intimidation
The Chore at the time Level of Scariness
High School Caterpillar
College Mosquito
Grad School Stingy wasp
Medical School Grumpy Troll
Residency Fire-breathing dragon
Working doctor Tightrope walking with dragon circling
Moonlighting alone Getting kicked in the nuts by a Grumpy troll while tightrope
walking, with a dragon burning the line.What is the scariest position you have ever been in? Have you ever been in a situation where many people depended on you if the SPLOUTS hit the fan? I just got back from moonlighting. For the un-moon-enlightened, that is when a doc goes to a different hospital in need to pick up a few shifts.
What made this experience interesting, by which I mean wet-my-pants scary, is that when I worked my shifts there, I was the only doctor in the hospital. Did you read that last part? I don’t think you read it loudly enough, so let me e-scream it at you, I was THE ONLY DOCTOR IN THE HOSPITAL! Sorry, didn’t mean to bust your eardrums. But that’s intimidating.
I’ll get to the big finish now so that I can end with ranting and whining, which is more fun for me. Nothing bad happened. No one died and no heroics were necessary. However, I spoke with the Emergency Room director. He had been there 15 years and remained a very Sharp, intelligent, jovial fellow who did not show the stress of having the responsibility of the entire community weighing him down like a beached whale carcass of responsibility.
He did say, though, that he has had several code blues upstairs in the hospital, several babies that delivered, and multiple critical patients where he’s the only doc. Intimidating. If something goes wrong, well, just keep trying because you’re the only person to fix it. Got a patient that you can not intubate? Well, you can’t call down anesthesia to do that for you, and surgery is not nearby to come in to do a quick tracheostomy, it is all you baby! Intimidating.
AAAAAH!!!That being said, it was a quite small community, so they could not afford to have in-hospital doctors all of the time to cover for the “just in case this might happen.” Thus the ER doctor has to do it all. And he does. Though, that is one of the reason ER doctors go into ER. We like to help people in situations where you are the one who has to do it all (sometimes for the simple reason that you are the only one).
Scary. Intimidating. Fun.
Comments (6)
HAHA! That’s what builds character! (getting the crap scared out of you!)
on a much smaller, less life-dependent scale, i remember the weekends i worked at a rather large urban hospital and was the only social worker there. that was stressful enough. you wouldn’t believe the things people expect a social worker to do!
I’ve put a lot of thought into “what-if” scenarios… many of them are pretty scary. But when the…ahem…SPLOUT hits the fan, so to speak, training just comes into action and things come naturally. I think that mentally preparing yourself for things to happen, thinking through the steps to fixing things before they break, is what keeps us sharp.
Good practice for the future? I hope not! Your site looks pretty interesting, I’ll have to come back and read some of your stories. Sarcasm is great when used in a fun, positive way. That wasn’t sarcasm! Hope that made sense.
Kudos to you, guy. I think that I’d feel pretty comfortable with you being in charge when shit hits the fan though.
Currently, I haven’t had too many enormously frightening scenarios yet.
Of course, I’m just starting college. AND I’m going into journalism.
Life-threatening problems? Not for a while, anyway.
I felt like that when I was a senior resident on night float in Saginaw … and to think I wasn’t even alone! There’s actually nothing that crushes one’s ego more than when you have to call for help.