Work relationships.

This is an interesting article which puts a different perspective on this story.

For the rest of the world who don't get news from Canada, a brigadier general from Canada was recently relieved of his command in Afghanistan after admitting to having sex with a subordinate officer. When you are a brigadier general I suppose you are limited to having sex with Lt. Generals, Major Generals and of course plan old Generals. The fact that he was married to a different woman adds to this. He was at 42 the youngest general in the army and could have had a promising career ahead. On the other hand he was also court martialed for accidentally shooting himself around the same time which says something about what it takes to advance in the Canadian Forces.

I am quite happy to have one less Canadian soldier in Afghanistan.

Leah McLaren points out however that without workplace romances, many of us would be celibate and many would have never got married.

I have been married for 25+ years to a nurse. Most of my close friends from medical school are married to nurses. I met my wife in a social setting, however it was a medical party. I have never gone out with any nurse that I met at work. I would like to say that this is because I deeply respect nurses as fellow healthcare workers but that would be bullshit. It was not for lack of trying, but I was held back by a number of factors.

1. I am usually inept around women.
2. The idea of working with someone for 4 or more weeks after being turned down has never appealed to me.
3. Most nurses hate me within a few hours of working with me.
4. I am too frigging busy at work and I suspect most nurses are too. If I have nothing to do, the last thing I want to do is hang around the ward hoping to make time. If I am not on call, I would rather be home, if on call I would rather be sleeping or watching TV.

I have often heard doctors describing their on call sexual exploits. Again I wonder when they found the time (or the woman). I can remember two occasions when it might have highly theoretically been a possibility for me. Both times my beeper started smoking for the next 3-4 hours effectively losing any highly theoretical opportunity for on-call sex.

The other interesting subject is whether a doctor who "dates" a nurse is making use of her subordinate role to him. I would suspect most residents and quite a few staff physicians would argue that at least in teaching hospitals it is the reverse. Doctors are completely subordinate to nurses!