My psychiatrist, a relatively-well-known expert in his field: Here’s the thing about doctors: you can’t trust us. You should never trust doctors, because we do not know what we’re doing. Some of us THINK we –
Me: I mean, some of you – I feel like you pay attention to –
Him: No!!! I don’t know what I’m doing, no doctor ever does! It’s part of the job, it’s – just, do your own research, go on PubMed and stuff, tell me if you think I’m wrong, get a second and third and fourth opinion if you think I’m – it’s just, medicine is a bad field! It’s so unscientific and we’re not held to any real kind of STANDARD and we’re just so SMUG – just, don’t trust us! NEVER TRUST DOCTORS.
Me: Okay, so, I swear you this solemn oath: I will look up every medical thing I am ever subjected to on PubMed.
Him, now feeling uncertain of himself again: …except, of course, don’t spend TOO much time on there, don’t tired yourself out – because, you know, we don’t need you getting all hypochondriac and anxious about – everything. And look at the – methodology and everything, obviously, you have to keep in mind that most research is also bad, it’s just – doctors! WE don’t have ANY standards, so –
Me: Yeah, I know, I know, you gotta strike a reasonable uh – paranoia balance?, or, uh –
Him: Yes, right. It’s important to have a REASONABLE LEVEL of paranoia.
my professor spent our entire seminar whining about how there’s too many girls in our group and not enough boys. he was like “i’m not saying women can’t be good surgeons but we need more men” no, we don’t. men suck. deal with it.
CRY ALL YOU FUCKING WANT YOUR TEARS DON’T MEAN SHIT TO ME. YOUR TEARS MEAN DICK TO ME JUST SO YOU KNOW
Okay so not to be that person who adds on to a post with their own story but my mom is a doctor and when I was eleven she took me to these all-female seminar led by a woman who was the head of a hospital because my mom is an empowered and independent woman who wanted her daughter to be the same way and so there’s like thirty females surgeons in the room, all sitting around his huge circlular confrenece table and talking about their experiences in becoming surgeons
most of them were like “everyone told me I should become a nurse or a pediatrician” and “people assume that I don’t know what I’m doing” you know, your average sexist bs
one of the women’s last name was starboard (yeah I know great name) and she was talking about how even though now she was one of the most accomplished surgeons at the hospital, the male scrub techs (read: guys who didn’t go to fucking medical school) and some of the male doctors call her starbitch in the OR because they (scrub techs mostly, strangely enough) try to suggest different ways to care for the patient and she always tells them no you didn’t go to med school and I did and so they would go out of their way to get the male doctors to treat the patient differently and then she would have to argue with him to prove what she was doing es right but sometimes the male doctor would come and take over the case anyway and this went on for a while
but then the hospital statistics changed bc this woman was literally being prevented from treating her patients bc the men were interfering and so the administrative head heard about this (she was female) and she was like y’all better stop or y’all better start looking for new jobs and then starboard was allowed to work on her patients and got the scrub techs replaced and all of the sudden, the patients were suddenly doing much better during and after surgery.
when she told this story she was like “people still call me a bitch, and maybe I am because I won’t let them walk all over me, but when you’ve got something to do, when you’ve got a life to save, you have to ignore their bullshit so that you can save someone’s fuckin life. Sexism should never stop you from accomplishing that”
and little eleven-year-old me still remembers that bc I was insecure and awkward and here was this woman who just did what she had to do and ignored all the people trying to stop here and she really was better than all the male doctors (like her patient stats were better) and I thought I should share with you this inspiring woman with the cool last name
I’m starting to appreciate more just how scary it is to be a doctor.
You have a patient come in with a stomach ache, nausea, feels tired and sort of generally miserable, no other obvious characteristic symptoms.
Out of 100 patients like this, 90* will be a minor gastroenteritis or whatever, maybe you ate something bad, here’s some nausea medication, go home and eat bland foods and get enough fluid and sleep it off.
And 7 will be appendicitis or gallstones or pancreatitis and need to be admitted to the hospital, 1 will be a heart attack with atypical symptoms, 1 will be the first sign of cancer, and 1 will be some weirdo disorder with a name like “Coleman’s 4268py deletion snydrome, Type II”** that you never heard of.
If I were a doctor, this would make me terrified to ever tell a patient “maybe you ate something bad, go home and sleep it off.” Even though that’s usually the right answer, and even though it’s a waste of time and money to do an EKG and CT and 4268py test on everyone with a tummy ache–it’s got to be anxiety-provoking to not be certain that you aren’t missing something. And at some point you will send someone home only to get a call the next day that they collapsed and now they’re in the ICU (or the morgue). And it’s got to be really hard to go back to work after that and say “go home and sleep it off” to your next patient, even though that’s still usually the right answer.
I’m understanding more these days how tough it is to live with that kind of risk and responsibility.
*not actual statistics
**not an actual thing
Accurate.
These kinds of sobering thoughts almost made me quit during 1st year of medical school multiple times. And the times when the 1-in-100 (or 1000, or 10,000) “worst outcome” has happened, in the many years since then, has certainly tested my resolve.
But I have learned to learn from those times. I refine my differential diagnosis, I sharpen my senses. I vow to avenge that death/bad outcome like a father over his murdered son’s grave, while also vowing not to start ordering CT scans for every stomach ache.
That’s what doctors do. Must do, to survive with our souls intact.
i'll apple your turnover 