Personally I like to scream. Loud and long, high pitched and scary. I like it when people are startled and for a minute interrupt what they were doing. I love it when people around me start to tremble a bit so they have a hard time finishing whatever time critical and highly complex task they were doing at that moment. I enjoy seeing the effects of adrenaline on precision and appreciation of perplexing situations.
That is why i scream when in a roller coaster, or when having sex. That is why I grunt when eating chocolate or choosing the best iphone from the web.
Some people have interesting personality traits. We regard them as daring, or intelligent. We sometimes give them credits as “he is too smart to interact normally” or “he has been in the OR all night”. In healthcare we have stopped wondering why people behave in a certain way because there have been, always, morons among us. It cannot be that they simply are ill equipped for resus right?
I walked into Play-Resus yesterday and found a trauma surgeon – roleplaying a teamcoach – stopping in the middle of a scenario to confront a junior doctor that, without any training whatsoever was put in the position of being teamleader in a rough trauma case. He stated, without hesitation: “I am going to give this to you as loud as I can so you will never forget: YOU DID IT ALL WRONG!” And then went on roleplaying his part of teamcoach.
Screaming is fun, it is exhilarating, in fact I like to scream at my wife, at my kids and at the referee during soccer games. However, neither my wife, nor my kids, let alone the referee ever did any beter after my interventions. Kind of makes you think….
Dr. Gerard Rover MD 