Comrade Barf

“Stabbed”
In the spirit of rocket_tello’s pen post, I feel inclined to say something: No matter how nice your residents are, no matter how encouraging they seem, they will throw you under the bus when met with the slightest hint of adversity.
The other night I was with my female resident and a pregnant patient who needed a pelvic exam. I will be honest. I am tired of looking at vaginas. So, if given half the chance, I will stay up at the patient’s shoulder, bed-side, making chitchat with her or her husband. The resident went to check the cervix and the woman was in immediate distress, telling the doctor to stop. The doctor did for a moment and then asked if she could continue. The patient responded yes and visibly braced for impact. The doctor continued. It was too much though, and she yelled “Stop!” with her arms folded over her face. Her husband whispered quiet encouragement, but she was in tears and was not having any of it. The doctor suddenly looked confused, stood up and started talking about how the test was necessary.
I look over at the doctor, and something twitched in my back. The doctor suddenly says, “Are there too many people here? If you would prefer, we could just have me, the nurse, your husband and you in the room.” Yeah, that’s right: there are five people in the room and that twinge in my back is a knife. The doctor, in her panic, offers to throw the medical student out of the room in a futile effort to mollify the patient’s grief. I don’t react but I am insulted. The patient says. “No, it just hurts.” At which point I feel like saying, “Yeah, everyone else in the room got that except for our esteemed resident.”