Apparently, Dr. Roboto has thrown in the towel, conceded my cynical superiority, and has decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Yep. He's rolled over and realized that I'm no pushover, have no respect for him, could care less if I am fired and, more importantly, my sucky attitude toward him has spread to the other nurses. Pied Piper rulz; no one has called him Dr. Roboto in weeks, we now all call him "Bobo".
Oh, Bobo is still going full tilt on the rapid door to doc. But, if the nurses are busy he will greet the patient at the ER door and see them before they are triaged. Great! Now you're beginning to understand teamwork! I am a powerful ally, but a formidable opponent as he has discovered. I have caught him trying to make jokes, along with uncharacteristic human emotion, an occasional eyeroll, and actually CHATTING with nurses. I told him, as he considered having one of us give a constipated individual and emergency enema, that there was a special place in hell for ER docs who order either ear irrigations or enemas in the ER. The son of a bitch actually laughed and didn't order it. Another social lesson well learned (or he is at least on the right combination of meds), but my work is not yet complete; now I just need to get him to talk to his clavicles a little less as he does occasionally backslide on that issue.
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I rarely work with Mikki, and had an opportunity to do so with her today on an infrequent day-shift appearance on another busy shift in which we ran our little legs off. Everyone got hydration, labs, meds and instructed in how to collect a sample of the alleged diarrhea that a many had claimed to have experienced for days, which somehow mysteriously resolved upon arrival to the ER. We had Dr. Cripes today, which was a happy bonus. Gotta love him. Working with Mikki is a trip because she has been very insecure in the past, and frequently looks to me for...I don't know, courage, leadership, approval-whatever. She gets better all the time though, I'm happy to report. I tell her the cool kids like her and not to worry about what Second in Command says or does, because she is unhappy, unliked, and uncool. Who needs her?
I had been given a yellow pen with a duck head that lights up and quacks when you push it on the noggin; very annoying, but I LOOOOVES me my ducky pen. It goes well with my yellow scrubs; the yellow submarine in da house.
I emitted a cheerful "quack" with my pen as I greeted Mikki and Cripes. "Hey, what's with the duck", Cripes asked. "It annoys Bobo, what could be better?" I asked.
"I used to be a wreck when you and I had to work with Bobo", Mikki said. "I'll never forget the time you said you wouldn't respond to anything he said unless he called you by name and looked you in the eyes".
Cripes and I laughed. "That was also the day I told him he was needy. And because he took the time to write 'suture set, 1% lidocaine, 4-0 nylon, normal saline, Zerowet and set up for sutures' on an order sheet which took 4 times as long as it would have for him to just do it, I put 1/2 the wrong stuff up on purpose".
"I wanted to disappear", Mikki cringed.
"Nurse Passive-Aggressive on the job that night?", Cripes grinned.
"Yep, guess you will never have to meet her since you are pretty much the pinnacle of ER physician role models. We all change shifts so we can get to work with you".
The highlight of the day was that my boss told me that I would be receiving the first raise of the new year since my anniversary date is January 4. WOOT!
