Being Thankful for What You Don"t Have

Now I'd like you to open your eyes and be grate­ful for what you don't have in your hospital: In a hos­pi­tal in Cal­i­for­nia, the chief of neu­ro­surgery was wres­tled to an oper­at­ing room floor by police deputies after throw­ing a fit when a nurse refused to let him operate.
The sur­geon became bel­liger­ent after insist­ing on oper­at­ing on a man who frac­tured his spine in a two-story fall.
Two other sur­geons had deter­mined the injuries were not life-threatening, but the neu­ro­sur­geon insisted the man would die if he did not receive imme­di­ate surgery.
He "threw a fit" and began yelling and curs­ing at staff when they told him equip­ment for the pro­ce­dure needed to be trans­ferred from another hos­pi­tal.
When the sur­gi­cal instru­ments arrived, a nurse refused to allow him to oper­ate until they could be ster­il­ized.
The sur­geon threatened the nurse by punch­ing his fist in his hand.
He took a swing at the police after they were called to intervene.
"Do you know that I am a #$%&^%$ doc­tor, and I'm going to do what I want," he said.
Let us give thanks.
That we don't prac­tice along­side this guy.
Such med­ical bul­ly­ing leads to both 'bad patient out­comes' (a euphemism if I ever heard one) and career dis­sat­is­fac­tion (another euphemism, no?).
Overt aggres­sive behav­iors such as being wres­tled to the OR mat or hurl­ing scis­sors or scalpels or other such unsports­man­like OR behav­ior doc­u­mented on the net.
Just search 'doc­tors behav­ing badly' in Google in lieu of rent­ing a hor­ror flick.
It's kind of a med­ical "Girls Gone Wild", but with­out he free t-shirt.
And then offer your thanks to your pre­ferred higher power.
I'm a good girl.
I don't hurl my endo­scopes at my staff; they are much too expen­sive to send out of repair-the scopes, not the staff.
And fling­ing KY Jelly on 4 x 4s won't hurt a flea, even if flung with deadly intent.
I don't do that.
And yet, I will need to keep mon­i­tor­ing my social behavior.
A sur­vey con­ducted by the Insti­tute for Safe Med­ica­tion Prac­tices (ismp.
org/Survey/surveyresults/Survey0311.
asp) described less overt dam­ag­ing physi­cian behav­ior con­de­scend­ing language or voice into­na­tion (often, say 28% of respon­dents) and impa­tience with ques­tions (often by 25% of respon­dents).
This level of cranky behav­ior, more mod­est than fly­ing instru­ments, strongly affected how often staff ques­tioned poten­tially incor­rect med­ical orders.
The Joint Com­mis­sion, the accred­i­ta­tion body that cer­ti­fies hos­pi­tals, issued an alert in July 2008 man­dat­ing that hos­pi­tals adopt a zero-tolerance pol­icy toward bad behav­ior from staff, which must include a code of con­duct and a way of dis­ci­plin­ing offend­ers.
This zero tol­er­ance pol­icy was to begin Jan­u­ary 1, 2009.
You can find the full text at jointcommission.
org/SentinelEvents/SentinelEventAlert/sea_40.
htm.
Let us all give thanks for this, too.