Attendings Forget What It's Like

I am convinced that the moment a resident graduates and starts practice they forget what the previous 6-10 years have been like. They must. How else can you explain my weekend?

Friday afternoon I get a call from my husband saying that the case that was scheduled for 1:00 pm has been postponed. The good news is that he will be home for dinner. The bad news is that he will be leaving promptly after dinner to do the case that was postponed. Why was it postponed? The attending had a "couple's massage" at 1:00 pm. Seriously! This is the same attending who just 3 years earlier was the chief resident at this program. Surely, he knows that moving a case so you can get a massage with your wife is going to make someone else's wife upset. (I hope it was with his wife). Maybe they are having "problems" and needed a massage together in the afternoon. If I were going to get a couples massage I would want it after I had worked a long day, not right in the middle of it.

My DrH is also on call this weekend. He takes call from home which is usually a good thing. Usually. The particular attending on call with him doesn't ever tell the residents when she will be ready to round. So DrH left the house before 7 am to round on his patients and waited for her to decide when she would be ready to come in. All the other attendings tell the resident on call when they will round so they can be ready. Not her. So after 6 hours at the hospital today "waiting" he was able to come home for a few hours before actually getting called back in. That is where he is now.

We still have another 36 hours before call is over. Who knows what else could happen in that time. But these two experiences, one right after the other, lead me to believe that these attendings must suffer from amnesia. They must have completely forgot some of the most important years of their life.... or they intentionally attempt to make the residents (mostly their  family) as miserable as possible.

Note to self: when my husband is calling the shots, I will never schedule a couples massage at the same time he has a case. Nor will I ever let him forget what the residents family is going through. I will always remember!