The 'Shouting' Doc.

I was doing the weekend rounds that saturday, my fellow house officer in surgery had taken a well deserved leave. I on the other hand had decided that I needed to 'work' instead of 'rest' so I had skipped taking my leave that quarter.

Anyway as you may well imagine, surgery rotations are not 'yam' as my people like to say and I was under accumulated stress from my 3months in the rotation, now I was on my own and I had to see all the patients in all the wards. I'll give no further description of my work load!

This patient had been admitted during the week and he had sustained an injury one of his knees which we could not repair at our centre and he was to be referred to a teaching hospital. My task was to liase with friends at a teaching hospital to find out if the procedure could be done at their place. I had contacted a friend and was still waiting for a reply, in the meantime, someone had notified the patient that I was the 'rate limiting step' to his being transferred and he decided to put pressure on me......

To cut a long story short, I exploded not just with the anger and irritation of being unduly disturbed but my pent up load of stress added a fine touch of a display of fireworks from my end. I shouted at my patient in full view of everyone on the ward.

Its a display of anger I regret and rue over anytime I remember it.I use this medium to apologise to my patient, I am sorry I shouted at you. I have learnt my lessons, chief amongst them is never to shout at anyone least of all my patient(silence is golden!). Secondly to take a leave when it is due!

Comments

  1. rethots11:34 AM

    Silence is 'truly' golden, only, even though we know this.....sometimes we'd rather shout. It makes us relieved.

    ReplyDelete

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