Monday, January 27, 2014

Bad Mouthing

Why is it that different medical specialties AND doctors within the same medical specialty love to badmouth each other? He is a bad doctor because he didn't do this, she's a bad doctor because she didn't do that, surgery hates medicine, medicine hates surgery, everyone hates family medicine, psychiatrists are crazy. I have been guilty of this myself. But, you know what? We all do our best. We all have 24 hours in a day and spend at least 10 of them working, usually more. We worry about our patients when we go to bed at night, we try to do our best by them because we are responsible for them. Orthopedic surgeons ask you for help because they are busy worrying about the broken hip in the ER that they have to get to the OR and feel unsure about that insulin order, family medicine asks for your help with the Guillaine Barre syndrome because they feel uncomfortable sitting on them until a hospital with a neurologist deems the patient bad enough to take them, the internist, they didn't know the patient's fracture needed reducing when the ER doc had casted it. We all work together, we all need each other, let's pull together and stop bad mouthing each other.

2 comments:

Liana said...

I like to think most of this is good-natured... like that time the BMJ published an article about orthos being as strong as an ox and almost twice as clever.

Unknown said...

In contrast, I think most of what I've witnessed is unpleasant and is designed to vent frustration and reinforce a sense of inflated self-worth in the person / people doing the venting.