We get attached

It's very easy to get attached to some of our patients. When I think about this topic, I hear all sorts of scenarios from my psychiatric nursing class, where we talked about why we like some patients more than others.

Some of them remind us of someone we liked, didn't like, was our neighbor, relative, or friend.

It's not confined to patients, either. Sometimes, we nurses, meet some incredible physicians and other staff in the hospital.

Our docs in the Hotel, while often quirky, are our doctors. So when one wins a major prize, we celebrate. She has been with the Hotel for almost her entire career. Other doctors just visit us, and while we're nice to them, we're not nearly as fond of them as we are of our own.

However, since I have been roaming around on behalf of the Hotel at our sister unit, I've met a lot of doctors I first learned about while reading notes. One of those docs was Dr. M.

Dr. M. was a surgeon at the Washington. We waited for him for a long time. The first specialist retired, they hired someone, then the other never showed up (got a better offer while awaiting information from our HR--the specialty is in demand). We had one doctor (on loan) but PrivateU called him back to work in their hospital (when he wasn't sitting outside the US awaiting his Green Card.)

After years of waiting (literally), Dr. M. came on board from oceans away. He was a jovial fellow for a surgeon. The patients really liked him. He was kind and down-to-earth. Many of our doctors liked him, because he had a phone number and answered the phone whenever possible when he was at his desk. He was also happy to answer any questions they had when they saw him (the infamous hallway consults). I got to help Dr. M. occasionally when he was on the sister unit, visiting folks after surgery. Dr. M. always seemed to be smiling. Eventually, Dr. M. had a real department with another surgeon and a nurse practitioner.

However, our happiness was short-lived. We got the news that Dr. M. died at home over the weekend. Arthur Schopenhauer said “Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

The happy, smiling surgeon left us physically, but we'll never forget him or the good work he did for our rehab folks.

More later...