You Are Such a Jerk!

Dr. Condescending was working the night shift when I got a patient who was experiencing some mild shortness of breath. The man had an extensive respiratory history and had recently been diagnosed with CHF. The department was swamped and I was transferring patients to the floor left, right and centre. The new patient had blood work done, ECG done, was hooked up to the monitor, had a rhythm strip printed and had a foley catheter inserted because I knew he’d be getting lasix and someone would want accurate ins and outs.

I sit back at the desk huffing and puffing (getting over a cold – again) when the good doctor sits down in the chair beside me and asks, “Are you nurses not printing out old records and ordering chest x-rays any longer? Because I just had to sit down in front of the computer, log in under my name, look through his old chart, print it off and then had to order the x-ray. This took me 14 minutes to do and in those 14 minutes I could have seen 3 patients. I’m sure you nurses are busy but it’s your job to maintain the patient flow in the department right dear?”

Being polite with Dr. Condescending doesn’t work. It seems that he makes it his life’s work to make newbie nurses hate their jobs. He used to provoke a whole lot of anxiety for me. Not anymore. Why? Because I have come to realize that his snobbery is beyond my control. He’s a jerk – plain and simple. He’s a jerk to the nurses, he’s a jerk to the patients, he’s a jerk to the residents and med students, he’s a jerk to the other staff doctors and he’s even a jerk to the coffee guy.

He continued to look at me expectantly waiting for an answer and when none came his way, he started to ask again. Not being in the mood to listen to his baseless ranting (again), I said quite a few things to him that I probably shouldn’t attempt to rewrite. His lame response in kind was to suggest that I was likely experiencing monthly hormonal fluctuations while my student for the shift looked on in horror. He then gave the charge nurse $5 to “order something for the poor hungry nurses”. His money was promptly returned while the rest of the department enjoyed a ridiculously delicious pot luck dinner. He of course criticized the food as being far too pedestrian for his sophisticated tastes.

If there’s any moral to the story, it’s that no matter how hard I work, there will be a jerk willing to dismiss everything I’ve done. But he will be the lone voice that will be silenced by many of my patients and friends cheering me on!