Mindlessness

I had thought that just one example of the mindless behavior of some of the current resident doctors would be enough. But I am tempted to give another example of the same resident doctor that I described in the previous post. There was a patient who had undergone a sterilization operation after her delivery. She had been given a spinal anesthesia for the same. Some of the patients given spinal anesthesia develop a headache because of leak of cerebrospinal fluid through the puncture made in the covering of the spinal cord. This patient had a similar headache for which she was given medication by this resident doctor. The next day morning our resident proudly told that she had given tablet Lynoral to that woman because she had a spinal headache. I was aghast because Lynoral contains a synthetic estrogen that among other things suppresses lactation, and has nothing to do with their treatment of a post-spinal headache. I checked what medicine the patient had purchased, and found that it was indeed Lynoral, and she had already taken two doses of the same. I asked the resident doctor why she had given Lynoral to that the patient, since it would not cure her headache, and would suppress her lactation. She thought intensely and said that she had actually wanted to give Lanol-ER. Lanol-ER was paracetamol, which could be used for treating a headache. We stopped the medication and prescribed paracetamol. Luckily her lactation had not been suppressed by the two doses of estrogen she had already taken. One of my colleagues was this resident doctor’s examiner, and passed her in her MS examination. I pity that resident's current and future patients. P.S. : I find that this post is read quite a lot. You may like to read about this same resident at the following link HERE. You may click on it or copy and paste the following link into the address bar of your browser and press the 'Enter' key. http://shashankparulekar.blogspot.com/2009/11/selection-charade.html