Doctor's Bile

Yes, It happens.

At times you feel like giving vent to all your anger and frustration in work place. You feel like shouting and screaming, thumping the table with the flat of your palm or fist and at the same time resist an urge to split the head of idiot your fury is directed at.

I am a doctor. According to one of the shrinks people like me have very high moral and ethical values. I have no idea what exactly that means. May be it means that I usually call a turd, a turd. I may demure at times and choose to call it a piece of shit or a lump of excreta if I am in one of my sarcastic cum volcanic moods.

The matron, in charge of nurses at the receiving end of my tongue lashing (utterly uncivilized, it may be argued) did not have any ready made strategy at hand to deal with my outburst. She stood there defensively trying to utter a few words. There was medical superintendent too in the same room. As a matter of fact it was his room and he had called in the matron after I had barged in and nearly shouted that some idiot is trying to disturb my department. The medical superintendent knows me as a person who speaks his mind. He also knows, I suspect, that I am a hardworking but very impulsive fellow.

As I had entered his room he had asked me "How are you, Sir?"

Mind you 'Sir' here does not reflect my advanced age or even years of work experience. This is how we address each other when face to face. Behind the back 'Sir' is replaced by any of the other terms of references ranging from 'that person' to 'motherfucker'. Perfectly normal, in my opinion. I think, a person who always talks respectfully about almost all the people even in their absence is either a certified bastard or a saint. I have no fucking idea what makes a person a saint. A lot of historical 'saints' have spawned a lot of religions and almost all of them have resulted in blood bath hence they can't be saints. What kind of saint doesn't even have wisdom enough to anticipate future violence/bigotry as a consequence of his/her preachings? 

"Not fine, Sir" I replied

"What Happened, Sir?"

"Someone transferred nurses from my department, Sir without even informing or consulting with me and I am telling you I am very upset" I was indeed extremely angry because I knew which matron had done it and why.

"No one has taken my permission or informed me too" he told me." Let me call the nursing superintendent" he punched the number on the phone and waited for the answer.

I had already been to the room where nursing superintendent and other matrons park their heavy arses, hunched over registers, discussing who should be posted where. They get paid by the government which means that they do some work at least on paper. Plotting and planning along with satisfying their ego pretty much defines their work. I understand that. It is perfectly normal. In any bureaucratic or administrative hierarchy, it appears to be the rule of thumb that higher you go, less work you do and whatever work you do its purpose is to help inflate your ego. The good results whenever they come about, are merely a side effect. This is much more true in government sector where I work. Private sector is shit hole far worse than the hospital and medical college I work in. I have worked in private sector too.

Before barging into the medical superintendent's room I had gone to the nursing superintendent's room. 

After introducing myself to the seated matrons, I had asked "Who transferred nurses from my department without notifying me?"

They sat there silently, a few of them concentrating on their registers with duty rosters. No one spoke.

I had to repeat the question a bit louder.

"She is on leave...Just submitted her station leave about half hour back and she is going to be back on monday" one of them told me.

"OK...then who is the senior most here?" I asked

All of them looked at each other. I counted them. They were five and all of them looked at everyone else before one of them murmured something.

"Excuse me? Could you say a bit louder please?"

"She is on leave too" She said quite audibly looking at the surface of table.

"Fine then, who is next senior most?"

All five began looking at each other again. There were five tables in the room and eleven chairs. Rest of it was filled with four steel cupboards storing a lot of registers. They all dressed in camel brown clothes and white aprons. I have intense dislike for them. One of the reasons is that their average weight is in the range of 66-70 Kg. I have nothing against overweight people. The matrons are overweight because all they do is to sit on their asses and may be make a round or two of a few wards everyday and they take elevators even for going one floor up or down. I dislike them because they wear their uniform. Uniform is OK but in this case they do it to make it clear for anyone that they are not simple staff nurses anymore.

One of them gestured towards another one. The latter was trying to bury her head in the register.

Some of them know me from previous encounter and others, I suspect, know of me because I had blasted the principal of nursing college in the past. The principal is short, fat and ugly by definition. Ugly, I know is subjective but I am sure a lot of people will agree with me on that including her husband.

"Mam, will you please cancel the order because it is seriously going to disturb my team?"

"I can not do it. Let the concerned matron come on monday. You talk to her then"

"But the orders are from tomorrow. What if some untoward incident happens in the meantime? You people have not given me any substitutes. Who is going to be responsible? You?"

"Please go and talk to the medical superintendent" She said in a tone I deserved.

I was about to tell medical superintendent when he was dialing for nursing superintendent that she is not around but by then it was too late. He had put the phone down. There were two other doctors sitting in the room talking about something. 

After a while one of the matrons entered. She was the one who had gestured towards the next senior matron. The medical superintendent asked her about the transfer.

"There is nothing of that sort" She said." And anyway the nurses are going to stay at their original station till monday" She added.

"What?" the anger surged in me again. The bitch was lying through her teeth.

"Who are you? Where is the senior person you had indicated and who I was talking to? I shouted.

The senior had sent her junior to medical superintendent's room. The medical superintendent has no idea who is senior in the hierarchy.

"Fine , I will talk to you" She had come and she was going to get it from me. " How can you people post or transfer staff nurses at your whim without consulting the head? Do you have any idea about the work in my department? Have you ever worked in my department?"  

"No, I have not" she replied.

"If you transfer my staff you better come personally and work in my department. I make a team and it works beautifully and then people like you come and try to destroy the whole team. Do you even realize that or for you nursing job in all the hospital departments are identical?"

She was silent and medical superintendent was moving his right hand palm down to calm me.

"As long as we are working fine everyone thinks that our job is easy but the moment some shit happens, there are inquiries and invariably someone is hanged and it is never you matrons who take the blame for the screw ups or do you" My spittle was flying and landing on the coffee table.

She was looking intently at her shoes.

"Do you?" I shouted really loud.

 "Sir, calm down please. Let the concerned matron come on monday and we will talk again. I promise you nothing will happen. I did not even know all this transfer business" medical superintendent tried to calm me down.

"Sir, there are five nurses in the department and there is deficiency in others so we simply took two of the nurses and transferred them. We have to run other departments too, Sir" The matron found her voice.

"So you consult the doctor in charge BEFORE you something like this. There is something called specialization in case you are not aware. Nursing staff, like technical staff and doctors need to specialize formally or informally and that's how you run a hospital smoothly. But I know that you don't know about it because you have never worked yourself like that, have you?"

There was no point in badgering her anymore. She was like a punching bag at that moment and disgusting.

I left.  

I went back to the department and crossed out the latest orders in the nurses duty roster. After second thought I crossed out the entire page.

And then I stormed out.