Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Richard White is always willing to collaborate with the health care team so he called St, Francis Hospital’s help desk today to ask for a consult on his difficult patient.
“Hi, tech support, I’ve got this patient here, nice guy, but his heart is acting funny,” started Dr. White’s consultation.
“Thank you for calling tech support, Paul Weeks here, could you please be more specific about what is going on with the heart?” asked the cheerful voice on the other end.
“I don’t know! I guess it’s just acting sluggish? It’s slower than it use to be, and less powerful. I tried whacking their sternum a few times but nothing. Can you send someone out to like, I don’t know, upgrade it or do a virus scan or something?” asked Dr. White.
There was a moment of silence on the line followed by a long, condescending sigh. “Did you try turning it off then back on again?” asked Paul while audibly rolling his eyes.
”Nope. Didn’t think of it. I’ll give that a whirl!” answered Dr. White. He called over his friends who happened to consist of the perfusionist, tech, nurse, and anesthesiologist who always insisted on standing around him when he’s in the OR.
“I asked my perfusionist friend Cindy to turn the heart off. While it was off I thought I may as well slip in there real fast to and perform a highly-skilled replacement of the aortic valve. When I asked Cindy to turn the heart back on it was working better than ever!” gushed Dr. White while writing the patient’s discharge summary. “I’m so honored to be part of this highly-skilled multidisciplinary clinical and unaccredited-diploma-mill-trained-tech support team that works together to save lives!”
When asked how he did it, Paul Weeks avoided eye contact while he explained. “If these stupid people would just try restarting the system before calling IT, I would be unemployed. I guess I should try to be thankful that this hospital is full of noobs.”
At press time Dr. White was overheard calling a landscaping company to help him manage his patient’s baffling vegetation.
