 |
 |
 |
 |
@ |
@Brooklyn
Memoir (27)@
At an on-call night during the pediatric rotation, a father of the in-patient child visited me asking the explanation about his son's disease.
According to the father, his son was not improving at all.
He said angrily "What kind of treatment are you doing?" I tried to respond to him as calmly as possible. His anger escalated despite my repeated explanations. I gave up further efforts and brought my senior resident to him that night. He was an Indian man from a high cast; a man of pride. He demanded to be called Dr. G instead of his first name and he also called other residents by their family names.
Dr. G began his explanation calmly to the angry father, but Dr. G's calmness didn't last more than 10 minutes. He lost his patience with the the father when he cursed at Dr. G. Dr. G finally got him out of the ward.
He said, " Dr. Kido, you don't have to deal with this kind of rude person. A patient has to have respect towards doctors." He didn't care what he did. Luckily nobody cared this incident.
Another time when I was doing my rotation in adult ER, I saw a male
patient with high fever and skin rash. The skin rash looked to me chicken
pox. Since I was not so experienced in those days, I was not so
confident with my diagnosis. Other medical residents in the ER were not
so sure about the diagnosis, neither. I decided to seek some help from
a pediatrician and began to walk over to the pediatric ER. I happened
to come across Dr.G on the way. He accepted my consultation request easily
and came to
the adult ER with me. At a glance at the patient he said with dignity
"This is 100 % chicken pox , no doubt about it. To diagnose chicken
pox in adult is sometimes difficult. I'm proud of you, Dr. Kido."
Dr. G was a nice and reliable pediatrician as this episode shows.
I wonder if he is having a safe medical practice in the U.S. where millions
of malpractice law suits occur every year.
E-mail:kidot@momo.so-net.ne.jp