Every single field where time is spend catering to customers – even if they’re patients – is going to see its fair share of entitled folks who demand to be treated differently than everyone else.
OP is a plastic surgeon working at a teaching hospital in Canada. He got a call one day from a senior resident in the emergency department, apologizing because a patient was demanding a plastic surgeon stitch up the cut in her hand.
For context this takes place at a large academic centre in Canada where it is very common to have residents performing basic procedures.
I once got a call as a senior resident from an Emergency physician apologizing for consulting us for an irate woman with a small laceration on her hand insisting that a plastic surgeon come to fix her RIGHT NOW.
Of course this was well within his scope of practice but despite telling the patient this, she refused to allow ‘just an emerg doc’ to fix wound.
The emergency doctors are trained and capable, but OP told the other doctor he would be down when he could.
He explains the situation and I decide that this would be an excellent opportunity for malicious compliance as well as teaching my junior resident.
So I tell the him not to worry, I’ll be down when we finish in the OR in a few hours.
Two hours later, he and his junior resident – who was an emergency room resident who happened to be on his service – came down and introduced themselves.
So I go down to see the patient with my junior, who just happens to be an off service emerg resident.
I examine the patient, and explain to the now impatient woman that ‘Dr. Junior Resident’ would be fixing her hand.
(Keep in mind by this point she has been waiting a few hours longer than she would have if she had let the emerg doc fix her).
He let his resident stitch her up in order for him to learn…
So ironically, instead of having her hand fixed by an emergency physician who has likely done thousands of these, she has it done by a junior emerg resident, who has done, like 2 or 3.
And of course, I was there the entire time to ensure the resident did a satisfactory job, so it was more work for myself in the end, but I did enjoy the irony of the situation.
I think this is delightful, but what about Reddit? Let’s see!
Plenty of people have been stitched up by emergency docs just fine.
Of course it doesn’t always work out.
You don’t even have to be a doctor to do it properly.
Stitches are probably pretty common in emergency medicine.
Because yeah, they’ve seen it all.
What an entitled Karen.
I’m glad the only time wasted ended up being her own.
Want to read another story where somebody got satisfying revenge? Check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.