“Sir, you won't believe this!” one
of our Professors told me.
“What?” I asked. I thought I had
seen enough and nothing would surprise me any more. But I could be
wrong.
“We were in a meeting called by the
Dean. It had to do with three clerks of two sections, who were
called. Only one clerk out of three came. He said one of the others
had gone to the head office, and the other one was busy and hence had
not come. The Dean nodded her head. But another staff member got
angry, and asked how could a clerk not come saying she was busy when
the Dean herself had called her? Then the Dean also said what was the
clerk busy with. The clerk was told in no uncertain terms to come and
she came. Now a clerk has the guts to tell the Dean that she was busy
and could not come when called.”
“Hmm....” I said. “I am not
surprised because of two reasons. The first one is that the new Dean
is mild by nature and kind. She would not take offense at
such behavior by a person far junior in the hierarchy. The other
reason is that I have seen such behavior before.”
“You have? Where?”
“In my own unit. I was in the OT. We
had a patient who had had a copper-T inserted by my House Officer five
months ago. I was in the process of its removal laparoscopically
because it had migrated into the abdominal cavity. It had passed into
the right broad ligament and then had partially exited into the
peritoneal cavity through the posterior leaf of the ligament. 'Please
call that House Officer' I said. She was in another unit after having
finished six months of residency in my unit. She did not come. She
did not meet me for another week. When I saw her next, I asked her
why she did not meet me as I had asked her to do. She said she had
been busy.”
“Huh? What did you do to her? In our
days we would have got thrown out of the hospital if we dared try
such a thing. Furthermore, we would never have passed M.D.”
“Nothing. I told her ignoring an
order by the Head of the Department was inappropriate behavior. She
went away. I would have shown her where she had gone wrong, and told
her the right technique of avoiding such a complication. She missed
out on that education. She passed M.D. and went away.I wonder who
will remove the copper-Ts that she inserts after they migrate out of
the uterus.”
