gatekeeper

i am somewhat known for not knowing when to keep my mouth shut. but, fortunately for me i once managed to put a watch in front of my mouth, but only just in time. i was on rotation just before intermediate exams. this was a difficult time when generally you had to make sure you didn't make enemies in other departments. you always ran the risk that the guys you irritated would be in the exam or write a scathing report to your own prof. then, no matter how well you knew your work, you would not get through. it's just the way things were. interestingly enough the obstetric and gynaecology department stood apart from all other surgical disciplines. for many years they had not done the rotation and therefore did not write the intermediate exams common to all the rest of us. other than the fact that this meant that they didn't share with us the burden of running the icu department (which they did use, however) it also meant that they could be very narrow minded. they didn't have an overall knowledge of physiology and the management of acutely sick patients. to them a patient was simply a vagina and a uterus of varying size, with or without a bun in the oven. in short, the rest of us thought of them as lazy and stupid. i was on call in the icu at kalafong (hell). the way things worked there is we all knew all the patients in the finest detail. on a call day that knowledge was absolute. we could recite the finest details of any patient under our care in an instant. so late that af...
Source: other things amanzi - Category: Surgeons Authors: Source Type: blogs