Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Negative for Posting, Commenting, or Answering Email. Positive for Working a Whole Bunch.

I have been working a lot. Consequently I have developed a long shit list. Members of this list include:

  • All physical therapists: Rival only surgeons for mumbling and dictating reports with mouths full of food. Appear to increase, rather than relieve, pain in at least half their patients. Bore me senseless. Shut up, physical therapists.

  • All rheumatologists: I get that rheumatology is unbelievably complicated, but MUST every chart note exceed 15 minutes in yakety-yak time? Oh, must it really? You called in a medication refill, Dr. Rheumy. That should be one minute--two minutes, tops, if you also want to note a few lab results while you've got me on the line. Shut up, rheumatologists.

  • All podiatrists without exception everywhere and always amen, amen: Oh my stars and garters, will you all just shut up about the marvels of custom orthotics already. Custom orthotics bore me. Feet bore me. YOU bore me. Shut up, podiatrists.

    Specialties so far remaining in my good graces: Neurology, Oncology, and a handful of internists but by no means most of them, or even half of them. This is just my personal experience, but it seems to me* as though neurology and oncology attract some brusque, no-nonsense personalities and damnit, as a transcriptionist, that is what I want. In fact it is what I generally want as a patient, too, but I don't think I'm the rule there and I imagine most people are all complaining that their neurologists and oncologists are so cold and clinical, no bedside manner at all. GOOD, I say. If I suddenly develop multiple sclerosis I don't want bedside manner. I want a cold clinical fish who won't mistakenly diagnose me with Parkinson's or epilepsy or Lou Gehrig's or what have you.

    Do not even start me on the OB/GYNs, whose bedside manners stink more than not anyhow, but especially when they're done up Hollywood-fashion.


    *Translation: "Don't show up here with a link to an August 2005 survey you searched up to demonstrate that, actually, most neurologists and oncologists are the swellest, swingingest, heppest, most personable people around, because I don't give a fuck and I don't want to hear it and if I could be bothered to check in with this blog more regularly, I would even delete that comment on the grounds that this blog is not the Monty Python Argument Clinc** and I find the tendency of people on the internet to nitpick every declarative statement, however qualified, tempered, and disclaimer-laden it may be, unbearably tedious."

    **Why, yes, of course I will delete you for quoting from the Argument Clinic sketch. Depend upon it.
  • 3 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    My mother's neurosurgeon/oncologist is incredibly no-nonsense and upfront, and we would have it no other way. There is no way to make brain tumours pretty, and I, for one, appreciate her lack of condescension and forthright manner. Screw bedside manner. I want a realist.

    Anonymous said...

    *Translation: "Don't show up here with a link to an August 2005 survey you searched up to demonstrate that, actually, most neurologists and oncologists are the swellest, swingingest, heppest, most personable people around, because I don't give a fuck and I don't want to hear it and if I could be bothered to check in with this blog more regularly, I would even delete that comment on the grounds that this blog is not the Monty Python Argument Clinc** and I find the tendency of people on the internet to nitpick every declarative statement, however qualified, tempered, and disclaimer-laden it may be, unbearably tedious."

    Unless I miss my guess, I believe that one's directed toward me (and even if I'm wrong, I would prefer to believe that everything's about me). In relation to a subsequent post, I would simply note that this is what erasure actually looks like.

    Anonymous said...

    Bad linky! Bad!