As a young medical student leaves university and gradually gets mentally altered into being a doctor – chances are he will be raising an eyebrow or two on certain matters. Indeed, there is very little sex in the hospital and medical staff in general has high self esteem and mediocre sense of humour. That alone leads to an atmosphere that can only be described as ‘suffocating’. It is therefor that I do not work in a hospital. I work in a little side building that is only minimally connected to the rest; The ER. For some reason the intoxicating sulphur smell of white coats and arrogance doesn’t seem to fully penetrate here. But as all fantasies go – the good hearted docs and nurses in the ER sometimes are forced to communicate with the bastards inside the hospital and there starts my argument why doctors lie and manipulate.
Truth-full honesty can only live where equality is the norm. Does that sound too minimalistic? Ok, How can you expect a normal being to behave when humourlessness and ego-petting is the norm?
Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with you petting something or someone (as stated before, there is way to little sex in the hospital) but ego-masturbation can only lead to one thing: a stone heart. So being or feeling equal is essential for men and woman not to lie steal and manipulate. In the battlefield, the soldier when asked by a general how he feels that day will not answer: “pretty bad sir, yesterday my closest friends died, as I watched I shitted myself and I haven’t slept because the foul stench kept me awake and so did the itch from the diarrhoea in my anus. Also, since my friends died – I want to kill myself and I seriously doubt if this whole war is a good idea.” Let that one sink in. If this feels acceptable, then you can imagine why a junior doctor will lie to a professor. That is not unexpected. What is unacceptable though, is that this professor doesn’t realise this is the case and doesn’t compensate somehow for this.
When communicating across specialities the same logic applies. We don’t present the actual story to the heart-surgeon – we tell it the way he wants to hear it.
So can we fix this? Well it is difficult to change someone else, but often times we are put in a similar position when a GP calls the hospital. Do we realise the story isn’t the story? That we are given the manipulated version of it? The story is what apparently we want to hear, so the GP gives it to us.
So does this matter? Is this fixable? Yes it is when one considers this is reality. Equality is key – or better yet, change the hierarchy around. Make the GP the one that decides, in reality but for certain in your mind. Let the GP be in charge, he or most likely she has already decided she wants you to see someone. Then the only question you can ask is “how soon”. Or “Thank you for thinking of our hospital… .Is there anything else I need to know about this patient”. Then you will get your story, the real, unaltered, not manipulated version of it. Can you do this?
If nothing else, it will change you from a sarcastic asshole into welcoming friendly professional. I bet that if we all made this change, the nurses will notice, and there will be much more sex in the hospital.
Dr. G. Rover MD
Dr. Gerard Rover MD 