We had stretchers on hand where I once worked, for the purpose of moving dolphins around for one reason or another.
Sometimes a dolphin would fall out of the tank onto the deck. Then we had to get four or six husky people to help. So we’d go out into the marina and round up a few fishermen.
The joke always was: Get four husky fisherman, or one Samoan.
In theory, a primary care physician–particularly one practicing obstetrics and pediatrics–has the broadest range of medical knowledge to master.
In practice, because there is no (reasonable) upper limit to the volume of knowledge, how much knowledge and expertise any given individual masters is a function of their intelligence and personality (i.e., the willingness to apply themselves to mastering a topic).
The theoretical range of knowledge required to master every arena perfectly has little correlation with which fields attract what talent. It is not the case that the brightest subgroup chooses general practice because they are able to master the broadest range of knowledge. In point of fact, as a rule of thumb the best and brightest choose subspecialty careers, and it’s a common perception that the generalists have a broad range of very superficial expertise.
One of my friends did that for a while, and she said that it was actually one of the better jobs she’d had. Sure, she had to clean up all that stuff, but she was more or less left alone to do it, and it was kind of relaxing.
Proctologist. Can you imagine looking up those things day in, day out ??
Reviving an old thread: Caring for Ebola patients. :o
When I was in nursing school I won the Pediatric Nursing Award. I hated my pediatric rotation, most of my patients were in there directly or indirectly due to abuse/neglect/knowledge deficit of the parents. (My instructor did say it was a weird few months on the unit). My patients included.
*A five year old with burns to 75% of his body, left at home as one of 6 kids… the oldest being 8 and the youngest being six months, while mom and her neighbours went out to the bar. (Children’s Aid Society involved)
*A three month old infant with pneumonia, because 15 year old mom thought baby just had a cold for the last 6 weeks. (Also CAS)
There were too many more sad cases to list. I realized that if I worked in Peds eventually I would end up slapping the parents. Or burn out and get cynical, like some nurses I saw.
My career has ended up working with dementia patients and in geriatric psychiatry. I have been kicked bitten punched scratched spit upon choked and had my wrist broken by patients. I have had men wonder if I am a masochist, and if because i put up with it professionally I have a “kink” in this direction. (That’s the wrong thing to ask me coming off a stretch of 5 12-hour shifts in a row, where a patient gave me a fat lip but I opted to stay at work because I was heavily involved in the palliative care of another patient who’s family had really connected with me and were happy I was caring for their dad.)
Even without the knowledge of the physical abuse I have suffered with patients I have other nurses… peds, NICU, Burn unit nurses say “I could never ever do what you do.” And I say “Nor could I do what you do. We all find our places, and each of us bring our best selves to the job.”
Also we all have our “yuck factor.” Mine is the mouth. I can do nasty nasty wound care, clean up after people infected with Norovirus, have had a dead finger fall off in my hand (it was black like charcoal and kind just snapped off like a burned stick) pronounce people dead, do post mortem care and call the families to tell them, but I cannot for the life of me imagine being a dental hygienist, or doing the deep root planing and scaling. That is just NASTY!
As for doctors…working with inner city people with multiple diagnoses. Drug addict, diabetes, gangrene, emphysema, and chances are they are just going to be in and out of your care until they die.
I think all doctors are in over their head. Medicine is simply not a perfect science. The degree to which your job is difficult would be in direct proportion to your ability to accept your own limitations I would think.
Pathologists probably don’t have to react minute by minute everyday, though. They can think things through. Patients don’t start dropping dead because the pathologist decided to use the restroom and grab some coffee.
It probably depends on one’s personality. This is true in a lot of fields, not just medicine. One of the great things about many software development jobs is that tasks are typically chunked out in day-to-day or even week-to-week portions, and you don’t need to be on your toes all the time if you can get the work done. Many of us will have “dead” days where we pretty much don’t accomplish anything. Management doesn’t care a whole lot because we delivered the product by Friday and the customer is satisfied. Tier 1 helpdesk representatives have to deal with minute-to-minute tasks, irate customers, and strict start and ending shift times. Back-office programmers can come in an hour late twice a week and nobody really cares if they get the work done. If someone does care, it’s usually a non-programming manager who raises concerns over professional image, and even then, it’s not like one is typically threatened with termination for that.
Yes, I was thinking of people working in children hospitals too. Has to be hard.
Ebola made me think of doctors working in poor countries, too. Knowing what is wrong, that it could be adressed and how, but not having the means to actually adress it. It must be intensely frustrating and depressing.
And people working in psychiatric hospital. Must be totally draining, and they can’t do much, either.