NEW YORK, NY – In an incident of astoundingly good professional behavior, a nocturnist in Titmouse County Hospital, NY was found answering a phone call without any trace of passive-aggressive tone in his voice.
The call in question was made by Nurse BooBoo Billy on the fifth floor, which is the Med-Surg unit where catastrophic medical emergencies, such as constipation of eight hours, and inability to sleep past 10 PM, are extremely common. Nocturnists often get called on these calamities every two hours and, being bound to Facebook and Tinder, often find it hard to take such calls with the professional earnestness that the other calls, like about a pulseless patient, might deserve.
But this particular doctor, Dr. Pumprooster, a nocturnist, made medical science history by answering the call without the slightest hint of frustration and coldness and impatience in his voice. He did not even ask, “Why are you calling me about constipation at this hour, is the patient dying?” or, “What were the day shift nurses doing all day?”
After the nurse told him that the patient is in room 315 and that he is Full Code and he is here for “some leg infection” and “some heart failure” and atrial fibrillation and dementia and history of rod in his spine and allergy to ciprofloxacin and morphine and chocolate and strawberry and bee sting and that his last BM was at six PM and it was pellet-like and wormy and it crawled across the bed and switched off the TV because it was playing Fox News, the doctor simply listened to the entire extremely-useful history summary without speaking and interrupting with a single word.
And only after the RN was done sharing the details about the amount patient ate for dinner and the fact that he had walked from the bed to the bathroom and then to the nurses station and finally to the bed, only and only then did Dr. Pumprooster opened his mouth-cavity and ejected a specific order for a soap-sud enema.
He then totally sent the nurse into a state of cardiogenic shock by saying, “Please call me if you have any more questions or if you want me to walk over and meet and speak to the patient’s family and answer their questions in brutal detail.”
