Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jun
27
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Call My Wife And Tell Her I’ll Be Home In Ten Minutes.”
“Call my wife and tell her I’ll be home in 10 minutes!” -OB to a nurse while repairing an episiotomy after a vacuum extraction.
There are 22 comments to this post.
Sheva had this to say,
Jun 27, 2010 @ 6:17 am (Quote)
Here’s an example where the words themselves weren’t rude, crude, or what-have-you, but this was the wrong time to say them.
Saying this, NOW, after Mom had such a difficult birth, was insensitive. It showed her that doc didn’t have her on his mind anymore. He wasn’t focused on her. I would NOT want a distracted doc stitching me up anywhere, let alone my vagina.
And if doc really needed to get the message to his wife, he could have *whispered*…
There’s a time and place for everything.
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Sheva had this to say,
Jun 27, 2010 @ 6:23 am (Quote)
Jane, I admire the angle you chose, but for all the docs and nurses lurking out there, may I offer a more sensitive option?
(Insert Mom’s name here), this will only take a few more minutes. You’re doing really great. You were really brave. (Even if you don’t think she was , there’s no harm in boosting her up a bit.)
Or something like that.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 8:14 am (Quote)
That would have been a more sensitive thing to say, yes. It probably wouldn’t have been even remotely honest on the doctor’s part, but so what? (And am I the only one here cynical enough to suspect the instrumental involvement and accompanying surgery was done not for foetal distress or labour dystocia, but for the doctor’s convenience and a desire to hustle out the door to get home to his wife?)
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Nicole Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 5:53 pm (Quote)
“And am I the only one here cynical enough to suspect the instrumental involvement and accompanying surgery was done not for foetal distress or labour dystocia, but for the doctor’s convenience and a desire to hustle out the door to get home to his wife?”
That thought definitely crossed my mind as well. Even if this is not true, the OB sure gives that impression. That, and that the OBs mind is not totally focused on his/her work at the moment and that he/she really doesn’t want to be there at that time (way to make mom feel like an inconvenience)
To the OP, so sorry your OB was so insensitive at a time where you needed to be treated with more compassion.
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Amy Jones Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 4:10 pm (Quote)
Yes, this WAS done by an insensitive OB who didn’t want to be there. This birth was one of my doula client’s and the OB who delivered her baby was the on call OB who (as was apparent from the moment we first met him) really didn’t want to be there. He has a notoriously bad bedside manner and this isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard about him, it’s just the worst thing I’ve ever seen him do. His license is actually suspended right now, though. I’m hoping he’s stripped of his privelegse soon.
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I also want to add a little personal outrage at how that doc was treating the nurse. Nurses don’t work for random hospital doctors, and they are NOT secretaries. It’s not her job to tell his wife anything, unless his wife is a patient. Nurses have a difficult, demanding, physical and mental job requiring that they oppose doctors and advocate for patients on a regular basis. Anyone who thinks they are or should be subservient to docs in any way needs their heads examined. It would severely compromise patient care. Nurses are your last line of defense FROM the docs. They are your first line of patient advocacy. Docs and Nurses perform different functions, and calling the docs wife is NOT one of the functions of a nurse.
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Cmat Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 7:29 am (Quote)
I see what you’re saying Staudtcj and I agree.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 8:11 am (Quote)
Agreed.
Unfortunately, the attitude that nurses are inferior to doctors and exist mostly as servants, underlings, etc to do the things doctors can’t bother themselves with has been around since the invention of the modern nursing profession.
In fact, when Florence Nightengale took her cadre of volunteers to the Crimea, the group was initially rejected, so they made a point of sitting quietly in a corner of the hospital and not making any moves until a doctor gave them permission to help out and instructions on what to do first. So the dirty bed linens, bandages, etc didn’t get changed until their subservience was officially acknowledged, providing reassurance to their “superiors.”
Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre English do an interesting study of this in their abstract _Witches, Midwives, And Healers_ (the first half of the book is about midwifery in the Middle Ages and early modern period, the second half about the holistic health movement of the early nineteenth century and the invention/institution of the nursing profession). It’s fascinating reading, and it’s not a very long book at all. You can get it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
Jun 27, 2010 @ 8:04 am (Quote)
Well, now we know why the good doctor opted to give the mother the Mighty Vac and an episiotomy.
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Liz Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 10:34 am (Quote)
Okay, that is what I thought too. The Dr. did the vac extraction and episiotomy so that he could leave faster. And then exposed his motives by what he said to the nurse.
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Jane Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 12:09 pm (Quote)
At the very least, he gave that impression, yes. It makes me wonder why the doctor needed to let his wife know where he was and when to expect him, since one would figure that the wife of an obstetrician would understand births don’t only take place nine-to-five.
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Not that I’d ever say it was -right- to perform epis/vac on a Mom and baby for convenience, but I do find that a lot of times here I feel torn between disgust at what the doctor has said because it’s bad service, and realizing that they’re human, too. They do have friends and families and often children of their own that they need to get home to.
I know there’s a difference between a doctor with a scalpel or vacuum and, say, a mechanic. Most times, a car can sit overnight if the mechanic decides to rush something and go home, or just leave it for the morning. Obviously women in labor can’t just “wait” on hold; if that were the case, this blog probably wouldn’t exist. But on a human level, OB who says “Tell my wife I’ll be home in 10 minutes” could have two young kids and a wife he’s gotten an ultimatum from that if he misses dinner one more time, she’s leaving/kicking him out. Hypothetically, the battle can be between one family and another, between family obligation and career. In most fields, how many of us would say “go with your family” automatically? We don’t know the circumstances, and people with 10 things on their minds don’t always have their “filters” working at 100%.
It’s a hard field to be in, I think, taking care of 98(+?)% of the birthing population of the country, while trying to have a life. And we can’t just say “If you can’t hack it, get out of this field.” I still think most doctors (and nurses) get into (and -stick- with) medicine because they do care and not just because the pay’s good. (Resident med professionals, please tell me if I’m wrong in that perception.) It’s very high stress, it is long hours to spend being anxious about paperwork and red tape and fearing “potential disaster” so they can put food on the table at a home they probably don’t see as often as they’d like.
That all said, I’m not excusing a lot of the things on this blog. The vast majority of entries are truly appalling, because they reflect some really backwards thinking. This one, though, I can’t really blame the guy too badly for wanting to get home. Ultimately, the entire scenario and everything I just wrote points (with everything else that also points) to a SEVERE need for reform from top to bottom. Students need to be taught to see things differently, midwives need to be legalized/encouraged as a career field, the work needs to be spread out so people don’t reach this burn-out stage pitting one family’s needs against another.
Long digression to play doctor’s advocate, but ultimately, I am sorry this Mama ended up on the losing end of the tug-of-war between her time and his, whatever the reasons. 
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Cmat Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 11:39 am (Quote)
You really do bring up good points. Sadly I think it will be a long long time before that kind of reform happens. At least it will be a long time before it happens in the US.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 12:27 pm (Quote)
It’s another good argument for making the field of gynecology separate from obstetrics, and having obstetricians be reassigned as hospitalists who work solely in the obstetric ward as troubleshooters when birth emergencies occur and as specialist surgeons. Working regular shifts, paid salaries by the hospital.
The multitasking they have to do right now isn’t good for anybody.
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WellBegun Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 3:51 pm (Quote)
An intriguing model, and perhaps this is on background in your mind, but it is one that would ONLY work if OBs are NOT the primary care providers for maternity care. If this were put in place in a system where midwives were the primary care providers and most women never saw an OB, I’d be all for it. However, it’s important to bear in mind that healthy, low-risk women do still need a skilled attendant at their births, and due to the personal nature of birth and the needs of a laboring woman, this attendant should be someone she knows well and trusts. Logically, this would be a midwife. In that context, I’m all for it. But until we can chuck OBs as the primary maternity care providers in the U.S. (and I don’t see many of them wanting to give up that cash cow and/or go to midwifery school), we’re realy at an impasse.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 8:42 am (Quote)
“An intriguing model, and perhaps this is on background in your mind, but it is one that would ONLY work if OBs are NOT the primary care providers for maternity care.”
Well, yes, I had rather assumed that sort of paradigm shift.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see midwives (CPMs, CMs, CNMs, any of them) as primary care providers for pregnant and labouring women any time soon, nor will we see obstetric specialists assigned to hospitals and kept as in-house staff.
I think this is a shame not just from the obvious standpoint of consumer friendliness, but for doctors as well. If they were in-house staff they could probably be covered by the hospital’s malpractice insurance. This would be cost prohibitive unless the number of obstetricians were greatly reduced, since I doubt hospitals would find much use for retaining a hundred or more OBs on staff (ten at most would probably suffice, especially if it were a teaching hospital with residents and interns at hand) but I suspect more doctors would rather focus on gynecology than obstetrics anyway. And the multitasking they’re currently forced to do as combination OB/GYNs is just ridiculous.
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cheeks023 Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 3:48 pm (Quote)
These are valid points, and I don’t begrudge the doctor his family life or personal time. However there is a right way and a wrong way to approach a situation like this.
How hard would it have been to smile at the Mother, give her some words of encouragement, say “I’m almost done, just a few more minutes.” And then continue on by saying to the nurse (pretending that it really is her job to be his secretary too) “We’re almost finished here. Could you phone my wife and tell her that I’ll be home in 10 minutes…just as soon as this Mama has her babe in-arms!”
It’s a simple choice of words that allows the new Mother to feel that she is a wee bit important. Common sense really.
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Jena Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 5:21 pm (Quote)
I completely agree. Sadly a class (or two or three) in tact and consideration is not in med school curriculum, to my knowledge.
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cheeks023 Reply:
June 27th, 2010 at 8:06 pm (Quote)
But quite honestly tact and consideration should not have to be taught in med school. These are life lessons that start as early as infancy. My 8 year old knows better then to be so inconsiderate when speaking to?about? someone in the room…
This just shows that Doctors often develop some sort of “god complex” that makes them feel they are above their patients and thus we are not worth their time…Which in my opinion makes them poor doctors to begin with. *note I am not just referring to OB’s here. I feel this way towards any doctors who behaves this way.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 8:49 am (Quote)
As I stated in some other threads, I suspect a lot of doctors (especially the ones who go into specialty fields, which obstetrics certainly is) are undiagnosed, relatively high-functioning aspies.
Empathy and tact are not our strong points. I can certainly learn to be polite, but it comes from reading books on etiquette and trying to ingrain the principles in myself via trial and error until the lessons finally stick, and until they stick, I swallow my feet a lot. I don’t have the natural ability to read body language or otherwise detect the tone of a situation the way most people do, and I can be very self-absorbed when I’m focusing on something I happen to be obsessed about, and reproduction/pregnancy/birth/babies is one of my fields of perseveration.
I would probably make a technically skilled but maladroit, insensitive, stubborn obstetrician.
In other words, a typical OB, alas.
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Add Your Comment.
To give him the benefit of the doubt: maybe the doctor wanted to indicate to the mom that this wouldn’t take long?
OTOH, it’s pretty callous. “You’ve just had a traumatic delivery, but in three more minutes, I’m OUTTA HERE, dude!”
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