Favorite Quotes
Part I
Schoolteachers' night out ends badly when one of them overindulges and unfortunately does a drunken faceplant on the sidewalk. She has moderate abrasions to her nose, forehead, and upper lip, and a 1 cm linear superficial cut to her eyebrow. They ask for a plastic surgeon. It's after midnight.
I explain that with a simple cut like that, the outcome will be the same no matter who sutures the wound, and I am an expert at such things anyway. The patient's schoolteacher friend shrieks at me....."It's her FACE, doctor!!!!!"
Umm, yeah. I know. But it's after midnight. Do you have a personal plastic surgeon? Well, no.
So I call in a plastic surgery resident, who sutures the wound.
Schoolteachers' night out ends badly when one of them overindulges and unfortunately does a drunken faceplant on the sidewalk. She has moderate abrasions to her nose, forehead, and upper lip, and a 1 cm linear superficial cut to her eyebrow. They ask for a plastic surgeon. It's after midnight.
I explain that with a simple cut like that, the outcome will be the same no matter who sutures the wound, and I am an expert at such things anyway. The patient's schoolteacher friend shrieks at me....."It's her FACE, doctor!!!!!"
Umm, yeah. I know. But it's after midnight. Do you have a personal plastic surgeon? Well, no.
So I call in a plastic surgery resident, who sutures the wound.
posted by scalpel at 8:15 PM
2 Comments:
Guess you had no choice, even though your initial comment to them was absolutely correct. So how'd the surgeon feel?
Grumpy, but residents are used to getting abused. There was no way a staff plastics guy was coming in at 2 am for that. If a patient requests a plastic surgeon, it's pretty standard to at least call one and discuss the case.
If the patient is reasonable, there are many ways to handle situations like that. It's the unreasonable patient that makes our lives difficult. I wonder how she would like it if she were called at home at 2 am next week to come to the ER for her suture removal when she had classes to teach the next day?
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