To sleep perchance to dream

The accusations against Dr. George Doodnaught are as disturbing as they are bizarre. The Toronto anesthesiologist has pleaded not guilty to molesting 21 female patients, who range in age from 25 to 75. While the women lay consciously sedated on the operating table, the 64-year-old allegedly kissed them, groped their breasts and even forced them to perform oral sex, all while hidden behind the sterility drape that divides the anesthesia station from the surgery.

Anyone who has spent time in an operating theatre knows there are nurses, cleaners and doctors buzzing in and out of multiple exits and entrances. So far, with few exceptions, witnesses who worked with Dr. Doodnaught testified he was a sought-after specialist with a good reputation. The prosecution is charging the hospital was engaged in a coverup.

Dr. Doodnaught’s defence: that the medications used to anesthetize his patients caused “sexual fantasies.” The drugs—including midazolam, ketamine, propofol and sufentanil—were given to patients in different doses to allay their anxiety and produce amnesia. The side-effects: the erotic and violent hallucinations these patients are confusing with reality.

It turns out there is an entire literature dedicated to the study of hallucinations and dreams during surgery—particularly sexual ones. “Sexual hallucinations have been reported since the advent of anesthesia,” begins a 2003 review article in the journal Anesthesia. In the late 1800s, the authors write, the use of chloroform in anesthesia was prohibited because of cases where women used “obscene language” while on the drug.

For decades, the medical community agreed that witnesses should be present when doctors give patients mind-altering drugs to avoid false harassment allegations. A 1992 review article in the dentistry journal Anesthesia Progress looked at the effects of benzodiazepines (such as midazolam) for sedation during surgery. The author, a Northern Irish doctor named John Dundee, discussed case studies in which female patients vividly recalled being sexually harassed by their dentists. “In 13 of 16 of the reported events, where patients and attendants were questioned closely, nothing improper could have occurred. In 11 of these, others were present throughout, while two events were physically impossible.” Some of the dentists who were working alone—that is, without witnesses—lost their licences.

The 2003 review article outlined a series of allegations and convictions involving “wandering hands,” “fondling” and forced oral sex. In Ottawa, in 1986, an emergency doctor was acquitted of a charge that he asked a patient to squeeze his penis while she was coming to after a surgery. A Norwegian plastic surgeon was tried in the Oslo High Court for masturbating nine patients who were on midazolam and fentanyl while he performed breast surgeries. A nurse who witnessed the surgeon at work helped to get him acquitted.

While the medical community doesn’t know exactly how anesthesia works, or why it causes hallucinations,, the authors point out that patients may be confused by routine touching during an operation. “Stimuli to the chest such as the removal of ECG electrodes, elbows rubbing the chest while the operator is working in the mouth or on the face have resulted in accusations of breast fondling.” Most cases on record involved female patients and male practitioners, though there are reports of the inverse. Most articles conclude that sexual hallucinations or fantasies are an infrequent, though noteworthy, side-effect of a range of drugs in anesthesia and sedation.

Erotic dreams under the effect of many anaesthetic drugs including Propofol have been known anecdotally if not formally studied in anaesthesia.  This is more likely if drugs are used in sedative rather than anaesthetic doses; patients do not usually  (should not) dream under anaesthesia.  It is possible that patients may dream while coming out of anaesthetic given that most of us lighten up patient while the residents are watching the wound heal, in the hope that the patient will wake up quickly  and we can empty our bladders and have a coffee.  Given low level of most of conversation which occurs in the OR which patients can sometimes hear, it is not surprising that they may have sexual fantasies.

The case against the unfortunately named Dr. Doodnaught raises some questions.

1. If the patients are just dreaming about sexual assaults, why was he the only person in the hospital accused.  Is there something innocently different about his technique?
2. There is a mention of him attempting oral sex with a patient during an abdominal hysterectomy.  Given that most people intubate their hysterectomies which involves muscle relaxation that is relaxation of ALL the muscles it is how to see how this happened?  It is possible that this could have been a spinal with IV sedation but this is stretching things.  Maybe I am not enough of a pervert but I am stumped as to how one would accomplish this.
3. Is he such a nice guy that everybody in the OR is willing to cover up pretty disgusting behaviour by him or did he just piss off the wrong OR nurse?

Don't know all the facts and like most cases involving the legal system and the press, I suppose I never will.

Bullying, disruptive physicians and thoughts on administration

One of my fellow physician administrators forwarded this post from Kevin MD.  I have pasted it at the bottom. 

I was talking with the same physician a few months ago and we were discussing how bullying was going to be next club with which physicians were beaten.  In addition the disruptive physician label has become the latest Scarlett A.  Both are perfectly valid concepts, many physicians were or still are bullies.  It is unfortunately the culture in which we were raised if you want to commit sociology.  Likewise there are many disruptive physicians and many of them have continued to be so in part because the system nurtures them.  It is the extension of the terms to legitimate disagreement or dissent that is the problem.

I have to attend a lot of meetings, which we all know are way to deal with any problem.  These include meetings specifically to deal with problems and regular meetings such as what used to called the OR committee and Medical Advisory Committee among others.

The MAC which is supposed to be a meeting of the department heads with senior management is no longer a forum where policy can be discussed or modified, assuming that was ever the case.  About two days before every meeting, I receive by email a massive document dump which I am supposed to read before the meeting.  There is of course no way I can ever read the whole package let alone figure out what parts of the package I should read.  Assuming I did read the whole package, I would find it full of incomprehensible flow charts and neologisms. This is what is called consultation.

Occasionally you may be asked to give feedback into a particular policy during the planning stage.  The meetings will be scheduled in the middle of the day when you can't get to them because you are working.  If you think it is important enough to take an (unpaid) day off, the meeting will be cancelled at the last minute because one of the "stakeholders" can't make it.  They of course never cancel the meeting because you can't make it.  Or they will invite you by the hospital email address you never use because it is too cumbersome to access.  When the policy comes into force, they will say that they consulted you.

Most policies are then presented to the MAC as a fait accompli.  The medical director, now called the Vice President - Medicine may actually have had some input or not.  It was at meeting about a year ago that I realized that there must be a secret administration running the hospital.  We were presented a policy on standing orders made by our quality department that was completely illogical and was going to hamstring care as we knew it.  Despite the fact that our administrator, both medical directors and all the department heads were present, the policy was presented as something we would have to live with and could not be modified.  Discussion did become a little heated and both sides made some edgy comments.  The policy went ahead however and we are gradually learning to live with it.

My father served in the provincial government for over 30 years rising to fairly high levels and attended multiple meetings.  He told me that every committee should have somebody on it whose job is just to say, "BULLSHIT".  He told me that people get irrationally attached to ideas and need somebody to bring them down.  Keep in mind it now almost 30 years since he (or people who think like him apparently) was involved in decision making.  This is not a new concept.  The Vatican when considering somebody for sainthood actually has an individual known as the Devil's Advocate whose job is to argue why the individual should not be a saint.

Nowadays if anybody is brave enough to object to or suggest modifications to some policy or plan they are told one or all of:

1. It is an accreditation standard.
2. It is a Zone/Regional/Provincial/National standard.
3. Administration is committed to the project.
4. People have already been hired and it is too late to stop.
5. You have no right to comment on this issue.
6. You are an asshole. (While it would be nice if they actually called you an asshole, they never phrase it like that, they just make you look like an asshole).

Pointing out how impractical implementing the policy with the resources that you have or that it won't work in the real world is useless.
In three years I have learned a few things about administrators.  I refer to nursing because I deal with them the most but this applies to most of the heirarchies in the hospital.

1. Administrators are usually hamstrung by how much money they have to work with and the political agenda of the people who decide how they spend the money (this includes the secret administration).  This is true by the way in both the public and private sectors (the private sector just has more money but also has to make a profit).
2. Administrators have the best job they have ever had in their life.  Why would they want to risk it by standing up to the people above them.  This is as opposed to physician administrators who are often doing this out of a sense of duty or because it is their turn and either already have a good job outside of administration or could go back to clinical practice and be a lot happier and quite often better paid. Non-physician administrators know this and resent this.
3. In the health care sector many administrators actually rose up from the trenches.  In a lot of cases this is on merit.  In quite a few cases it is just a case of having been in the right place at the right time.  There is also nepotism.  In one hospital I worked at, most of the nursing supervisors were relatives of a former administrator (she was fired, they stayed around).  The organizational chart resembled the genealogy of the Habsbergs.  Those who rose up on merit usually rose up by virtue of a non-administrative job for example a nurse may become what we used to call a head nurse by virtue of her good work on the floor or by seniority.  Her skills as a nurse however have very little to do with what is required of her (or him) as an administrator.  Frequently nurses who were quite good (or remember themselves as being quite good) have unrealistic expectations of their now subordinates.  Nurses also frequently become administrators for the "wrong reasons", better hours and more pay and who can blame them.  It is of course reasonable to expect anybody to be good as an administrator based on their skills as a clinician.  How many hockey stars became good coaches.  This was called the Peter Principle where people rise to their level of incompetence.  
4. Lower levels of management have shifted.  When I was in medical wards were run by head nurses who wore uniforms just like the floor nurses and some of them actually helped out when things were busy.  Over them were nursing supervisors who also wore uniforms and helped out on nights and weekends.  In essence head nurses were, to use a military analogy, sergeants   Head nurses are no more, they are now called supervisors and wear plain clothes.  Supervisors now have a different title and are not seen in the hospital after hours.  Essentially it is like the sergeants have been replaced with second lieutenants and anybody who has been in the army (I haven't) knows what that is like. 
5. Unlike most industries many of the top administrators and almost all the lower administrators are women.  This of course shows that women can be just a arrogant and out of touch as men can.  They also do stupid things, just like men.  It also creates an interesting dynamic for a male physician who has to deal with a female administrator (not that female physicians have any more luck).    It just seems easier to stand up and get into a battle with another man.  

Anyway here is the post from Kevin MD's blog.  I may just try some of his strategies although I know they won't work.

Become a disruptive physician: How to do it right

DIKE DRUMMOND, MD | PHYSICIAN | MARCH 21, 2013

“Disruptive physician” is one of the most misused terms in healthcare these days. In many organizations, those two words have become the c-suite’s trump card to quash any physician resistance to new administrative programs. These programs are often have purely financial motives or are a brazen attempt to dump additional tasks on the physicians with no regard for their workload or stress levels.

The doctor’s legitimate concerns about quality of care don’t matter. They are lost in the politics of the silos of the administrative and clinical sides of the organization. They are quickly seen as not being a team player. The disruptive physician label comes flying out and the doctor is deftly tossed under the bus so the meeting can move on to the next topic.

Often, this is bullying, plain and simple. It can create permanent consequences for the physician, including diversion into any number of treatment programs and not uncommonly losing their job.

However, sometimes the disruptive name calling is just a consequence of a fundamental clash of communication styles between physicians and administrators. In this situation, the skills inside the disruptive physician’s toolkit will allow you to do the following:

• Air your legitimate concern
• Be heard by the administration
• Avoid being labeled disruptive in the process

Physician vs administrator communication clash

Physicians are highly trained experts at finding a unifying diagnosis, the crux of the problem, the thing that is likely to go wrong. We see clinical issues administrators are completely unaware of.  We do all of this at lightening speed, because in our diagnoses often must be made quickly.

When we see a problem, we point it out without hesitation and we are not used to having to explain ourselves. And we shoot from the hip, without regard to the social setting or the politically correct thing to say in the given situation. One word for this is “blurting.”

This is not how you make your point in the midst of a meeting to a group of administrators. They do not think or communicate in this fashion. It is not what you say, but how you are saying it. Disruptive physician labeling can be the result of this clash of communication styles.

The disruptive physician’s toolkit

If you have a concern, talk to as many people as possible before the meeting where this program will be discussed

To raise a concern for the first time in the midst of a meeting is the definition of rude to an administrator. Discovery and building of consensus is best done before the meeting occurs – much like the work in politics is done in conversations before they vote on the bill on the floor. You want your concern to be discussed, shared, understood and at least a partial consensus on what to do about it. All done before any committee meeting.

Always ask questions, rather than making statements

Ask questions of everyone involved in the proposal and everyone who will be part of the decision on whether or not it goes forward.  Always start your questions with the word “what” or “how.“ This guarantees an open ended question that will draw the maximum of information from the person to whom you are speaking.

Here are some very simple and powerful examples:

• “What are your thoughts on program “X”?”
• “How do you see program “X” affecting the quality of care?”
• “I have some concerns about “X”. How do you see we might be able to address them?”

Channel Columbo

Do your best to imitate the character of “Columbo” in the old TV series. Hand to the forehead, self deprecating, “Maybe this is a silly question, but I was wondrin’ … ”

Columbo’s style goes against our doctor programming to be “seldom wrong and never in doubt” and I encourage you to let that go. Columbo was never called disruptive and was always very effective.

• Try asking questions instead of telling people what to do (giving orders)
• Try channeling Columbo when you speak
• You have no idea how massively effective this is with administrators (and everywhere else in your life)

Find solutions and build consensus

In your pre-meeting discussions, if you find your concern is shared by your colleagues, build consensus (before the meeting) on several solutions or ideas to address your concerns. You will have consensus on the concern and the possible solutions in your back pocket before the meeting begins.

Appeal to the highest value possible at all times

Always keep the team focused on the highest possible corporate value – one that everyone can agree to. Usually this will be quality of care or patient satisfaction. This is your trump card. When you are bringing up any clinical concern about an administration proposal, relate it to one of these  higher values whenever you can. It can sound like this.

“I know we all agree that none of us wants the quality of care to suffer as a result of this initiative.”

This phrase used early and often keeps everyone focused on the big picture, and not your objection. It states something no one can disagree with and keeps them from immediately disagreeing with you.

What not to do

• Don’t communicate like a doctor
• Do not raise your concern the way you would normally do on automatic pilot, as a declarative statement of fact. Example: “I think this is a bad idea and here’s why.“
• Always ask a question. Remember to channel Columbo. Be either curious or confused.
  • “I am confused here.” (Columbo)
  • This patient flow initiative is supposed to make it easier to see 35 patients a day, but a number of us here are concerned it will only increase the EMR documentation backlog and that will affect the quality of care. I am curious what your thoughts are about our concerns here Mr. CEO?” (open ended question)
• Do not show any emotion that could be perceived as negative
• Do not:
  • Stand up
  • Raise your voice
  • Furrow your brow
  • Slam your fist on the table, point fingers, slam doors, swear, throw things
  • Or send any body language signals of anger, frustration or hostility.
• Focus on your breathing and ask question
• If you do feel any of these emotions, name them out loud
• Let people know what you are feeling with a civil tongue. Just make sure you have done the work before the meeting so that everyone is aware of your concerns and feelings.
  • “I must admit when I hear your answer, what comes up for me is frustration.  I am curious (Columbo) what we can come up with for a proposal here that could address both of our concerns. “ (open ended question)
• Do not leave a paper trail or voice mail trail
  • It is completely appropriate to be seriously paranoid about documentation of any of your concerns in a format that could be shared. Do not send emails, text messages, messages through your EMR or leave voice mails especially if you are upset and venting to someone you feel is a trusted colleague. If you must vent in an email, write it and then delete it. Do not create a paper or voice mail trail.
  • If you do leave recorded or written evidence of your concerns, you are running an almost 100% risk of those documents or voice mails falling into the hands of someone who will label you as the next disruptive physician on staff. Here’s why.
  • It is impossible for them NOT to take your concerns and tone out of context.
  • Make sure you raise your concerns only in conversations, where the other person can understand your energy, tone, body language and caring for everyone involved – especially the patients. There is no way any of that can be understood through a text, email or voice message, especially by an administrator who does not agree with or understand your position.

Ultimately, if you work in an organization with a pattern of hostility towards the physicians and clinical staff and a habit of bullying with the disruptive label, you will decide whether that is something you will tolerate  or not. You always have the option to vote with your feet.

If you do decide to leave, it is my intention that this disruptive physician toolkit ensures the following:

• Your concerns have been heard
• You gave it your best shot at ensuring the program made clinical sense
• You don’t have the disruptive physician label hanging round your neck to get in the way of you finding a better position

Have you ever been labeled as disruptive?

If you are in a leadership position, what communication tools do you use to avoid the disruptive physician label?

If you have tried channeling Columbo, how did that go for you?

Dike Drummond is a family physician and provides burnout prevention and treatment services for healthcare professionals at his site, The Happy MD.

More than just being tired?

I picked up the following off the Medical Post otherwise known as the Medical Enquirer who email me a digest of news unsolicited everyday (I could block them, I guess)

There was a sigh of relief across the country in 2011 when a Quebec arbitrator ruled that the 24-hour shifts required of medical residents violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Finally, there was recognition that this treatment of neophyte doctors not only violated their health, but the safety of patients. Doctors shared stories of car accidents after long shifts and of mistakes made in the daze of exhaustion.Key thinkers on health care called it a common-sense ruling. A few months later, Quebec capped on-call duty for residents at 16 hours, down from 24. With mounting evidence about the adverse effects of long-call shifts, it seemed like a move the rest of Canada should follow.Or maybe not, new research suggests.Two studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association argue that the 16-hour limit might not actually improve the lives of residents or the safety of patients. In fact, it may make matters worse.A longitudinal cohort study, published in JAMA, used a first-year resident health survey to track the effects of 2011 duty-hour reforms in the U.S. (which, like Quebec, limited call to 16 hours but only for first-year trainees). Dr. Srijan Sen, a psychiatry professor at the University of Michigan who led the study, told Science-ish that his data busts assumptions. Shorter shifts did not lead to more sleep—nor did it improve the well-being of residents. In fact, they made more medical errors. “There are unintended consequences—negative consequences—associated with capping hours,” he said.For example, most hospital residency programs didn’t have the resources to hire new physicians or physicians’ assistants, so residents were expected to do about the same amount of work in less time. Dr. Sen linked the resulting “work compression” to medical error. “There’s clear evidence that working so long isn’t good for cognitive functioning. But it looks like we’re creating new problems by cutting down those shifts.”The second JAMA study looked at medical house staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital, randomly assigning them to a 30-hour cap, or to one of two groups with a 16-hour cap. The investigators used wrist watches that measure movements to find out if the groups working fewer hours managed to catch more sleep. The lead author, Dr. Sanjay Desai of Johns Hopkins, told Science-ish that the interns who worked less slept an average of three hours more around the period during which they took call, but otherwise got no more sleep than the control group.“Is three hours enough sleep to change levels of fatigue and response times?” he asked. “For us, this introduced potential flaws in the logic that if you cap hours, people will sleep more, and meaningfully more. That doesn’t seem to hold true based on the data we have.”There were other alarm bells. Dr. Desai says residents who worked night shifts felt their education was compromised, since learning and educational activities generally slow down at night. Hand-offs in the 16-hour groups increased between 130 to 200 per cent compared to the previous 30-hour model. As a result, patients were juggled between more doctors than before. (It’s well known that transitions of care can be akin to a game of broken telephone, a major source of medical error.)So what now?Dr. Chris Landrigan, a professor at Harvard Medical School, who did asystematic review on the effects of the 16-hour call, said most literature points to reducing shifts, and notes serious limitations in the designs of the new studies. The first by Dr. Sen relied on self-reporting of medical errors, well-being and sleep patterns. Dr. Desai’s study also made no direct measure of patient safety. Instead, investigators looked at sleep and hand-offs, which weakens the argument that caps lead to more errors.Still, some of the findings in the JAMA studies have been illustrated by the Quebec experience.Dr. Charles Dussault is president of the Fédération des médecins résidents du Québec, which represents the province’s medical residents. The FMRQ is trying to find ways to supplement education in the OR after surgical residents complained they weren’t learning enough. ”OR time is precious,” he explained. “Some of the models we proposed limited the number of hours residents can spend in the OR.”Quebec doctors have also reported concerns about the increase in hand-offs. “People are feeling the fact that there is more patient transfers than there were before could increase the risk of mistakes.” Dr. Dussault said hospitals are looking for ways to improve hand-offs. “We are still in transition,” he added. “People had the same debate when they went from a 72-hour cap to 36, from 36 to 24, and now from 24 to 16.”And that’s exactly it: shift length is a systems challenge that requires a systems solution. Resident duty hours need to be more humane, but cutting hours without redesigning the hospital infrastructure—standardizing hand-offs, addressing work compression or paying attention to resident education—won’t get doctors very far.Both Drs. Sen and Desai pointed out that it wasn’t just the shrinking of shifts that may have increased errors; it was the lack of planning and organization around the changes. Importantly, they cautioned against the 16-hour limit, noting it was too prescriptive — that a one-size-fits-approach is not suitable for every hospital.In Canada there is currently no consensus on the regulation of duty hours. We can do better. Somewhere between the U.S. and Quebec is a model for the way forward. 

There may be a few explanations.

They mention the issue of hand-overs and unfortunately the quality of communication between doctors is not that great; something medical schools need to work on.

Maybe 16 hours is too long a shift, maybe we should look at 8 or 12.

Our department has for years covered night call on a 1600 - 0700 basis.  Let me tell you, a lot of nights when I have to do something at 0400, I am pretty shaky (some nights not so much).  Not that I have knowingly done anything bad; I tend to just simplify things and go a little slower.  Maybe we need to teach doctors shift work management or how to work when tired.  Unlike a lot of shift workers, most of us sleep poorly if we have to sleep during the day; I can rarely manage more than a two hour nap without the aid of pharmaceuticals.  That is assuming you have the opportunity to nap at at.  There are a lot of other factors; how busy were you in the first 8 hours, were you woken from a deep sleep etc, how boring what you are doing is.

Are we talking big or little mistakes.  If you are doing a study on errors, you obviously want to have as many errors as possible.  So if for example I give the little old lady 200 mg of propofol when I only should have  to given her 150 mg and have to give her phenylephrine for her BP of 60, is this a significant error.  Are we just measuring a lot of trivial errors with no global effect, just because we can?  Further because medicine is an art not a science, many errors are just judgments which could have gone either way.

Patients are sicker after hours, procedures are more complex there is most opportunity for error no matter how well rested you are.  Because of the hierarchical system that still exists in medicine, more junior staff will be working after hours with less supervision.

And anyway do we have to make patient safely a justification for not making somebody work 24-36 hours or can we just say in civilized society, that is not how we should train people?

Just a few thoughts.

In the trenches.

As I previously blogged we are in a fee dispute with our government who want to cut remuneration to specialists in particular anaesthesiologists in order to redistribute the money to physicians who are "working in the trenches", meaning family docs, geriatricians and psychiatrists.  One of my colleagues copied me on a letter he sent to the president of our union and I really could not have said it better.

So to hear that I'm now being told to take a 25% pay cut and be insulted every second day by this minister really rubs me the wrong way. He has said that he needs to support the "workers in the trenches" (family practice, gerontology, psychiatry) and this causes me to scratch my head. If looking after a young pregnant woman with PIH at three am is not "In the trenches" what am I doing then? Missing my kids soccer games, dance recitals or just bedtime because I am on call? 

There are few lucky anaesthesiologists who work in cosmetic suites, dental offices or just do arthroscopies and ACL repairs on health ASA 1 and 2 patients.  These are a very small minority.  For most of us we take whatever comes in through the door and try to get as good a result as we can.  Not to sound bitter but our job is made one hell of a lot more difficult by those front line "in the trenches" family docs, geriatricians, emergency docs, (don't get me started on internists) etc who haven't worked up their patients properly, haven't treated their medical concerns and often sat on their obvious problems, turning what should have been an urgent procedure done during the day into an emergency in the middle of the night.  And unlike most specialists in our city, when an anaesthesiologist is on call, he is in the hospital caring for a patient or else he is at home, on a 30 minute leash, NOT sitting around having residents and hospitalists look after his patients for him.

Not to mention that when you phone most GPs offices now, after hours or even during the day, you get a message telling you to go to the nearest emergency room or call 911.  (Of course they can't take your phone call, they're busy out in the trenches!)  At least in the city now and in a significant amount of the country, GPs no longer do house calls, work in the emergency, deliver babies, work in hospitals or do nursing home visits.  So who the hell is in the trenches?  Not the person doing well-baby care from 9-5 and weekdays.  Geriatricians, who are for the most part GPs who took a weekend course, are insulated from any patient care by layers of nurse practitioners.  I don't see a lot of them at night in the hospital.

In defense of GPs or as they like to be called, Family Doctors, they were largely forced out of hospitals, emergency rooms and obstetrical units over the past 30 years that I have been in practice.  I don't remember a lot of kicking and screaming but it did happen.  They certainly have never gotten much respect for anybody, have been blamed for much of the increase in healthcare costs in past and had to put up with practice restrictions.  And quite a few of them do provide reasonably good care for their patients.  And unlike my generation who got a one year hospital based rotating internship where they saw lots of sick patients, FPs now go thru a two year family practice "residency' where they predominantly work with academic family docs and learn how to deal with healthy people and wash their hands of everything else.

Working in a quasi community/teaching hospital one realizes how much infrastructure is necessary for doctors to do their jobs and it is these people who are actually in the trenches.  This includes residents, hospitalists, nurse practitioners, physios, lab etc all of whom insulate doctors from their patients.  These people are the real people who are in the trenches and I don't think any of them are going to see the money that is about to be stripped off me.

Every doctor of course thinks what he does is the most important thing in the world and the best strategy from a government point of view is to get us fighting over who gets paid how much for what.

Frivolous Complaints

I cut and pasted the below from the Medical Post which sends me daily an unsolicited email with a link to its stories.  Unfortunately it is subscription only so I can't give out the link.

VANCOUVER | A patient who was offended because an eye surgeon sang during a medical procedure won’t be seeing the physician get an official sanction.

British Columbia’s Health Professions Review Board, who agreed with a previous ruling from the provincial college, dismissed the complaint in January.

The doctor had been called “arrogant” for singing, but the board disagreed with the patient.

“The complainant says that the registrant’s conduct of singing and talking about taking left-over hospital towels to wash his car while putting a ‘lense’ into his right eye is unacceptable, arrogant, disrespectful and shameful,” wrote review board chair David A. Hobbs in the decision.

Initially, the patient complained to the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons following the procedure, which occurred at a hospital on May 20, 2011.

The male complainant said the doctor was chatting about using hospital towels to wash his car and that he sang as he worked on the patient.

College spokesperson Susan Prins said officials took a look at the complaint, but found the patient’s care had not been compromised.

“The college does not have specific rules about singing in the OR, but physicians should be certainly be mindful of their actions and words during any procedure,” Prins told the CBC.

But when the college dismissed the claim against the doctor, the patient pressed on and took his complaint to the Review Board.

But the board said the complaint was “trivial.”

Neither the doctor nor the patient have been identified, due to privacy concerns.

For about the last 10 years or so, regulatory bodies like the Colleges (Medical Boards) and hospital patient concerns offices have had to deal with each complaint no matter how trivial.  This means now that since as department head every time we get one of these complaints, I have to meet with the individual and then write a response to their complaint. For this the hospital pays me handsomely.  The most recent complaint that I dealt with, was a patient with Mulitple Chemical Sensitivities who complained, even though the anaesthesiologist gave her the anaesthetic exactly the way she wanted (total intravenous anaesthesia avoiding all the drugs she claimed to be sensitive to), apparently because the anaesthesiologist tried to explain to her than Sevoflurane actually doesn't have any preservatives.  I wrote a letter to the Chief of Staff stating that only the most saintly and patient physician would have gotten any other outcome.

Not only did this individual get to complain to the provincial College (Medical Board) but when they rejected his concern, presumably after considering it carefully, the province had nicely set up at considerable expense, another board to hear his complaint.  I wonder how many nurses could be hired for the cost of maintaining this little board.

In the course of my work I frequently come across patients who have really been treated shabbily by our system and unfortunately quite frequently by some of my colleagues and occasionally I suggest that they should really complain about the way they were treated.  Most of them even ones who have actually suffered injuries at the hands of the healthcare system are reluctant to do this.  This leaves the trivial complaints.

Fortunately most surgeons don't sing in the OR anymore.  I remember more sang when I was younger.  I am sure some surgeons have beautiful voices and good  tastes in music; these individuals largely didn't sing much, it was the ones that thought they were good singers who sang. (A gynaecologist who played the organ in his church whistled during his cases; you could tell what he was going to be playing that Sunday.)  Largely instead of singing now surgeons spend most of the case talking about their perfect family, their perfect vacation, their car or their right wing politics.

Having listen to this as a patient while awake could be disturbing, sort of like going to the dentist except the surgeon isn't asking you a bunch of questions while there is a bunch of stuff in your mouth and you can't really reply although you feel obliged to do so.

And really who gives a shit if the surgeon is taking the disposable towels home to wash his car; at least they are making one more stop before going to the landfill.

"Emergencies"

Once again Great Zs has unlocked my writer's block.

About a month ago our friendly Patients Concerns Office sent me a little letter.   Apparently the relatively of a patient with a fractured hip wrote to complain that her loved one had waited 3 days to have his fractured hip repaired.  Moreover he had been put on the list every single one of those days which meant fasting until he was cancelled late in the evening.  This of course had to be anaesthesia's fault so I investigated.

First I got our head nurse to send me a print-out of every "emergency" case done during those three days.  I suddenly noticed a funny thing.  Saturday, day one of his ordeal was a pretty busy day with lots of ortho and other "emergencies".  Sunday however everything suddenly stopped around 1400.  This was indeed curious as one of the most mercenary orthopods was on call.  I then realized what had happened on this day.  It was Canada's version of the Super Bowl, the Grey Cup and the orthopod wanted to watch the game.

This of course wasn't the reason why the patient waited until Monday night.  The real reason was that his PT INR hadn't come down until then.   As I told the nice Patient Concerns lady, I have told ortho and their hospitalists multiple times NOT to book patients until their coags are normal and we go thru this little dance of booking and then cancelling patients just about every day (not infrequently because somebody forgot to stop their coumadin).

At our little hospital it is possible to predict how busy a day will be just by which surgeons are on call. .  We have the mercenary ortho surgeon above but we also have several general surgeons who bring in cholecystectomies off their wait list when they are on call.  They also book colon cancers as bowel obstructions.  Our hospital has been designated as the kidney stone centre for the region which means when one of a group of 3 urologists is on call, their office will book 4-5 patients.  These patients will come in as "day patients" at around 0900 which means you just can't run off one or two first thing in the morning while everybody else is getting their act together.  Instead the urologist waltzes in around 0930 expecting to go ahead of  everybody else, having booked his cases Friday morning.

Appendixes are another thing of course.  These are never emergencies between 0700 and 1600 on weekdays when it would mean bumping a general surgery room.  At 1600 however a general surgeon will be at the desk demanding that they be done immediately or else they will surely die (that is unless he has a gall bladder or a "bowel obstruction" to do first).

Things are tight, the population is older and sicker and the number of OR rooms hasn't really changed much in the last 20 years so I can see why surgeons might want to play these games.  On the other hand it is when we have a real emergency come thru the door that the shit literally hits the fan and it is usually anaesthesia and nursing who have to sort out the mess.  Not to mention the poor anaesthesiologist slogging away on some real or imagined emergency late in the evening.

Queue jumping

In Canada we have waiting lists.  This means that depending on the procedure or service you want, you may wait anywhere from 2 days to 2 years.  There is much hand-wringing about this, however life goes on, overall we get pretty good care and except for a few of what our former premier called victims of the week, nobody suffers all that much.

As a poison pill for his successors Stephen Duckett the former CEO of our health authority mentioned that in Alberta, there were members of the administration who were the "go to" guys for important people or squeaky wheels to get the head of the line and not have to suffer along with the great unwashed.  Dr. Duckett did this sometime before he got fired for doing this.

As a result of promises made during her leadership campaign plus desperate promises made when it looked like she was going to lose the election, we now have a commission into preferential access or as we commonly refer to it, "queue jumping".   This is enriching at least one retired judge and multiple lawyers to the tune of about $10 million,money that will never be spent on patient care.  It has to date been tremendously unproductive with people testifying that they had heard rumours of influential people getting special treatment but nobody is naming names.  This is not surprising as physicians and most health care workers are prohibited by various codes of ethics from divulging patient names and in fact the first doctor or nurse to name names is going to be getting a letter from their professional body.

But of course we all know that queue jumping goes on and that influential patients do get treated sooner than ordinary patients.  This is partially controlled by doctor's offices who after all decide in what order their surgeries will be done or whether or not to squeeze another patient into their busy day.  From conversations in the doctor's lounge many surgeons have stories about being asked to assess or treat an important person in a more timely fashion and who would disagree as after all they are important people.

As an anaesthesiologist I have very little to do with waiting lists (except that we all know if only anaesthesia would worker harder for more hours we wouldn't have waiting lists), however I do run a pain clinic with a fairly significant wait list.   And I let people queue jump all the time.  If a nurse asks me to see her or a relative early, I always try to help.  Likewise other doctors.  If we can't help each other, nobody is going to.  If a family doctor takes the time to phone me about a patient (instead of the usual unhelpful letters I get), I often put their patient in early.  Some family doctors, I know provide good service so I am more favourably inclined towards their patients.  I also try to take care of the patients of my fellow specialists in my hospital.  When another pain specialist wants a second opinion (this doesn't happen very often) I see them sooner.  Further I try to review my referrals and certain cases get seen urgently (this is actually triage which I will talk about below).  Face it another healthcare worker or relative of one is likely to actually attend their appointment and might even take your advice.

Further I have myself taken advantage of queue jumping.  When my kids broke a bone (or I thought they had broken a bone), instead of sitting in the emergency room  I just phone or talk to an orthopedic surgeon.  When my son broke his ankle on a Friday afternoon and I got the phone call at work I had visions of spending my Friday evening in the ER, until I thought why don't I just talk to the ortho on call who told me to just come to the ER as a direct to him.  As it turned out the ER was not very busy but the orthopod was very helpful for my son's non-displaced ankle fracture.  This is as opposed to the 2 or 3 times I decided to play by the rules and took my son to the ER and learned how badly the general public gets treated.  (After being spoken to very condescendingly by the family doc covering ER, I mentioned "Oh did you know I am a doctor, too?".  It was almost worth it,  just to see the look on his face).

When I needed a screening colonoscopy I could have wasted time going to my GP, and getting a referral.  Why would I do that.  I just phoned the gastroenterologist who got me in the following Monday (I would have been happy to have waited longer, honest).  Five years later, I sat down next to one the General Surgeons in the doctor's lounge and arranged my second screening colonoscopy.  When I hurt my shoulder, I got an MRI within two weeks of the surgeon requesting it; I never asked why that was.

The fact that doctors do this is one of the things that has come out in the inquiry and judging by letters to the editor, some of the public are upset that this happens.  My advice: get over it.

It was a sports medicine doctor who during the inquiry pointed out that with the long wait lists for various procedures, that it was only natural  that some degree of queue jumping would go on and that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.   He hit the nail on the head.  This isn't in fact queue jumping, it is called prioritization or triage.

Imagine if the ER just saw everybody in the order in which they checked in.  MIs would wait for hours while all the colds got seen.  An extreme analogy?  That is how elective surgery and imaging is triaged in most of Canada.  This effectively means the young active patient needing say an ACL repair waits behind the octagenarian waiting for a total hip even though the young patient is an active member of society whereas the octagenarian may just be turning food into shit.  Every time I get the BMI of 50 or the cardiac cripple presenting for a total joint, I ask the surgeon, "I thought you had a waiting list?"  (or I think I so ask them).  It is the unwillingness of physicians to triage or prioritize patients that exacerbates the effect of the wait list.  People cry foul when a professional hockey player gets an MRI or surgery toute de suite.  I have absolutely no problem with this.  Notwithstanding whether I agree with how much a professional hockey player earns, they do depend on their body for work and I would rather they have their knee MRIed  than somebody with migraines getting an MRI that everybody knows will be normal.  Likewise if the surgeon wants to do their ACL repair instead of doing 3 arthroscopies on obese patients in their 60s, more power to him.  The same applies to elite athletes, I have no problem with their getting seen and treated sooner.

I am 55 and proudly got my first senior's discount last month.  If however I tore up my ACL I would happily take my place in line and wait a little if I knew that at least more useful members of society were getting treated a little sooner.   Not every 55 year old thinks this way.

Because of  perceived unacceptable wait times for total joints we now have an aggressive program to reduce those wait lists.  I was at one of the meetings related to this.  Patients when they are booked are given exercises to do that will help them rehab.  According to one of the physiotherapists, only 20% of patients actually do the exercises.  "There", I said, "your wait list problems are solved, you can take 80% of the patients off the list."  "Yes... well" said the nurse chairing the meeting and that was that.  I no longer go to those meetings.

Meanwhile, our Tea Party opposition who advocate patients being able to pay to get to the head of the queue are outraged by patients getting to the head of the queue without paying.