Waxing in Gynecological Residency

I suppose waxing is a well known method of removal of unwanted body hair. It has its place in the cosmetic therapy of hirsutism. That was the only form of waxing I knew until today morning. But my resident doctors are full of surprises and one of them gave me one today. It was a patient's consent for undergoing a gynecological operation. I had instructed them about the exact words to be used because it was an unusual case. When they showed me the consent before induction of anesthesia on that patient, I found that it was not as I had wanted it. I pointed out the errors, and explained why it should be in a different way. They promised to change it. A little while later I found my senior house-officer doing something I had not seen before. She had cut a 1.5 cm long and 5 mm wide strip of transparent adhesive tape that is usually used for retaining dressings. I could not imagine any use of such a small piece of adhesive tape. So I watched. She proceeded to put it firmly on the patient's case record sheet, and pull it away. She repeated this procedure twice. Then she put away the adhesive tape and wrote on the part she had doctored. Then it dawned on me that she had removed unwanted words from the consent and put new words in their place. An eraser is a thing of school life. An adhesive tape is an essential item for the resident doctors. So if it can be used in place of an eraser, so much the better. The tape pulls out a superficial layer of the paper on which it is applied and leaves a reasonably blank though thinner paper behind, on which corrections can be made. The expertise with which she carried out the maneuver suggested that she had done that many times in the past, and was quite good at it. That perhaps qualifies as lateral thinking.