You know the teamwork/collegiality concept is having a bad day when a nurse walks up and starts commiserating about how difficult it must be for you to keep on executing the attending’s unpopular plan in the face of opposition from the nurses and two or three separate groups of consultants. I fell back on the “no comment” defense. No matter what I think of the attending’s plan, as long as it doesn’t seem positively unethical, I’m not going to express my doubts to the nurses or to nonsurgeons. Besides, as far as I can tell, he’s the expert in this area, and is much more likely to be right than his detractors are.
January 18, 2009
January 18, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Oh Alice,
you missed a golden oportunity to play the “Where did you go to Medical School??” Card. And I’m a coward myself, only playing it once, on an outside rotation, and even then only on my last day…and you gotta be careful with those Filipino/South American Nurses…some of them HAVE gone to Med School…but asking them where they got their medical license just doesn’t have the same effect….
Frank
February 1, 2009 at 12:41 am
Sometimes the “where did you go to medical school” card works.
“Perhaps you should take that up with the unpopular attending”, if delivered in just the right tone of voice, should be even more effective, though.