We have met the enemy, and he is us....

I'm back...

A year or so ago, I was walking down the OR corridor between cases, and a surgeon I had known for fifteen years pointed at me and said sharply; "come on; what are you doing wandering around? - take the patient back!" I was momentarily confused, since we weren't working together that day. It was good that I was disoriented for that brief moment, because it gave me pause before the anger rose in me; a pause long enough that I suppressed whatever growl would have otherwise erupted. I was four steps away by the time I figured out that he had forgotten who his anesthesiologist was for that day, and he thought I was it... (and I use "it" intentionally). When I passed by a couple of minutes later, he simply said "I thought you were my anesthesiologist." Maybe a little sheepish, but then again, maybe not. And I thought, "he treated me like he treats the nurses..." Here's an amusing account of a sociological study on why surgeons behave like surgeons...