The gown card reads “Don’t act like you think I’m a moron and I won’t act like you think I’m a moron.”
Look the people who work in the OR and are nurses and doctors are very smart. They have to be. We deal with the intricate workings of the human body. We have to know every part of it, and the mechanism of action of each of it. Not only that, but we have to know all about medications and their actions on every portion of the body.
There is a reason for such a steep learning curve for new OR nurses and techs. There’s a lot to learn. Not only that, you have to learn to anticipate what the surgeon wants. There is a reason that I reassure lap appy patients that if the surgeon falls out (passes out) during surgery the tech and I could band together to finish their surgery while we wait for assistance. It makes them laugh and relax. I once told a surgeon that I tell people this and they laughed and said after 23 years they would hope so.
The point is don’t discount anyone’s intelligence. No one; from the orderly to the circulating nurse.
There is also a soupcon or even a heaping cup of misogyny in there.
There is a prevailing “wisdom” that nurses are nurses because they aren’t smart enough to be doctors. I usually don’t respond to that. Who else is going to carry out the orders and question them when they are inappropriate? Many a life has been saved by a nurse refusing an order as written. Many a license to practice medicine has been saved by the same thing.
Some of us don’t want to be medical doctors and never have wanted to be one. Someone has to watch out for the patients and protect them from everyone else.
Let’s make a deal, you and I.
Don’t act like you think I’m a moron, and I won’t act like I think you are one.
Okay?
I’m glad we’ve had this talk.
Oh, and leave the patronization at the door, will you.
It just clutters up the workspace.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 