Medical Bullying
During this 3 weeks of OB call and 9 deliveries, I had to call for 2 OB consults. Both times the same person was on call. Both times this individual belittled me, bullied me and once even tried to refuse to see my consult. Why? Because he didn't want to get up in the night to see a patient. No interest in what's best for the patient or her baby, but pure self interest. Both times he told me my care of the patient was unacceptable. Both times he stormed in and hardly assessed the patient before saying she needed to go to section. One time he was right and one time he was wrong and she went on to deliver vaginally. I will never work at this hospital in obstetrics again. Never. I feel so horrible about both situations that I just can't face ever having to work with this individual again. The nurses and midwives tell me that he does this to everyone. I think that is totally unacceptable. He also didn't round on my patient post-section at all and had the nurses call me to come in and write her a prescription for her discharge medications even though I was at home and he was in the hospital. What an ass.
3 comments:
Good on you for refusing to work with him again. The hospital will continue to fail to retain good young OB-trained doctors if everyone is as brave as you. And considering his response to your first call, you were brave to call him again when he was needed. I think your anger is entirely justified. (Parenthetically one of our smaller private hospitals was revoked of its right to all obstetric practice 16 years ago, when a midwife could not get a particular consultant with a similar reputation to come and see a woman whose baby was in distress. The child was delivered only after the morning OB came into the hospital, was extremely flat and acidotic, was most unfortunately resuscitated and ventilated in NICU for days, and proved to have profound hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy. She is now a mere shell of a human being. Every time you call for help and demand that it comes you're doing the right thing.)
Report him. That behaviour was absolutely not okay and potentially compromised care. So sorry you had to deal with such an unpleasant colleague.
I'm glad you had the fortitude to stick by your convictions and demand that the asshole doctor do what's best for your patients. When I was starting out in medicine, I was much more timid and would let people like that walk all over me; it's only as I've gotten more confident in my abilities and become more aware of how patients can be affected by these situations that I've gained that ability to stand up to the assholes.
Which begs the question - why, in this profession that prides itself on providing high-quality care to patients, are there so many assholes who don't recognize the importance of this?
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