One of my senior colleagues had described our job as ass wiping… I am not proud of nor ashamed of the job. In the past, when I was so junior, senior physician and surgeon “ordered” us to do some procedure for them – to them, there are providing chance for us to practice so that we could get the “hang” of such procedure and later mastered them. However, it was only partially true, most of the senior had actually lost the feeling to do so…..some of the them didn’t even mastered the skill at all…..
I saw something like this in the Berjaya Time Square hotel
well, not wiping but just wash... but franklly said I found it difficult to aim properly...
As we become more senior in the field, colleagues started to ask for favor instead of giving order. They ask us politely and we complied. However, I knew that some of our colleagues considered it as part of the resident job. I am not irritated with it. I am glad I still had the chance to do so. There was this incident years ago when I did my hemato-oncology posting in the university hospital. The nurses had prepared the CVP insertion kit for me and left, she told me to call her when I was done. The patient next to us called her and asked her some question. The patient was thin and it was an easy penetration. As usual I did it under 2 minutes. I remembered her looks and mumbling while she hooked the CVP onto the monitor….most of the resident would take a long time…but I was too senior then (although I was designated as 3rd year resident…). I am not proud of it but perfecting the skill make the patient suffered less. And that is all what I wanted to do…..
I never turned down any referral and was glad to do it as I still enjoy doing most of the procedure. There is a few occasion that I would "murmur" - e.g. patient was put on dopamine drip without a prior CVP guided fluid challange as no CVP was inserted.
The policies had changed over the years. I spent more time on explaining to the family/patient than doing the procedure. It took 5-10 minutes for the explanation and Q & A. for a procedure. In a smooth case, it took less than 5 minutes to complete the task.
A doctor would only sympathize his patient only if he had undergone what he is doing to his patient. I was sick before….cut and stitched up by someone, saw my children being treated. I was lucky as the pain and agony was so less, as everything was in good hand and I intend to act as a good hand for someone else….
I hope I never ended up like this….
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