Not From Here

I work in a critical care area, specializing in hearts. Some days I know what I'm doing, I hope anyway, they let me play charge.

The other day we got a patient from the floor, fast heart rate. This was going to be my patient, I was charge but I had the only empty bed. Actually it didn't sound bad, usually we can deal with these fairly quickly. Patient comes down, I get him on the monitor, still standing at the bedside, no chance to look at the chart yet. The doctor comes in, now, he's not from here. I don't mean not from the local area or even not from the south, he's not from this hemisphere. So Dr. Z walks in, pulls the blanket down, pulls off the abdominal dressing from where he did surgery the day before. He states, "that looks fine." Technically that was true, it did look fine, but the pt didn't come down because of the dressing, Dr. Z still hasn't looked at the monitor or listened to the pt.

He then asks me about lab work on the pt, what were his labs this morning. Now he knows the pt has just arrived and there is no way I could know the answer, but he should have access to that. He decides, again, without the lab or a cvp, that the pt is dehydrated and we will run in a litter of NS.

I was off the next couple of days, when I returned I found that pt was now on amiodarone gtt without much success, in fact, he's a bit worse. Also, the nurse reported that there was a red area around the end of the dressing so Dr. Z pulled the staples completly out the whole length of the wound. The next day the distal end of the wound was open and had an odor. Again I was off, when I returned the pt now is on the vent and has abdominal abcesses. I'm not seeing a good outcome to this.

So I don't know what to think. Did Dr. Z get in over his head? I heard mumbling about when he opened the belly he ran into things he wasn't expecting. I realize things can go bad on anyone, however, I'm not liking this one. I guess my opinion went downhill the day before when I saw Dr. Z do a sterile procedure that was anything but sterile. I'm told that we should write up what we see and when they get enough complaints.........

The sad thing is, I'm not prejuidiced or racist. I guess if we all look in our hearts we will find some, but overall I know of several doctors that I adore and would choose should the occasion arise that are "not from here". But then there are those that because I am female won't look me in the eye (one even closed his eyes the whole time he was talking to me, that won't happen again either), that I've seen treat patients with lack of care or concern. However, there are some that are far more blue blooded that I that do that, but in all farness, I can't stand them either. Comments.......