Mistrust

It was during the communications skills workshop that I heard the story from my Registrar. When she had been working as a Houseman, she had been instructed to get the platelet count report of a patient with preeclampsia who was to undergo a cesarean section. She rang up the lab which was on the sixth floor of another building, and got the report of 250000/cmm. Then she washed up to assist for the cesarean section. Towards the end of the operation, the patient kept oozing in the operative field. The Registrar shouted at her that she had been a lazy bum and had told a lie instead of going to the lab and getting the report. If the patient dies, it would be on her conscience. That upset her. So hse feigned illness, washed out after the houseman washed up and went to the lab to get the printed report. It was indeed 250000/cmm. She showed it to the Registrar. She said she actually wanted to fling it on her face, but decency prevented her from doing so. Their relations remained strained for a week or so, but she still remembered the incidence very clearly and the trauma it had caused. After the workshop I asked her to check the HIV test report of a patient that we had sent because I had got a needle-stick injury while assisting my houseman had been operating on her. She called the lab, and came back to tell me it was negative. So I smiled at her and thanked her. She started towards the door, stopped, turned back and said, “Sir, I will get the printed report afterwards and show you.” It seemed to be an extension of the incidence she had related in the workshop just a little while ago. I smiled and said, “I trust you. You don’t have to actually show me the report. A resident would have been tempted perhaps to tell me the report was negative when it was really positive just to teach me, a strict taskmaster, a lesson. But I never thought you would do it.” She grinned at that and went away.