America's Dumbest Doctors

“Stupid is as stupid does.”
Forest Gump

Introduction


We don’t know how you happened upon our Dumbest Doctors rant, but we’re guessing you didn’t find our book review next to the magazines in a waiting room. Pity, because we can’t think of a better place for it. Although your personal first aid kit will do nicely, when America's Dumbest Doctors is released, in which case you may file this one under Reality Check, if you like, because that’s precisely what this is.

Rest assured, in the realm of clinical diagnoses, A.D.D. no longer merely stands for Attention Deficit Disorder.

Some of you may wonder how America’s Dumbest Doctors came to be. It isn’t really that long a story. For years we waited patiently (no pun intended) for somebody of appropriate angst to come along, sort through the pyramid of Giza-sized piles of goof-ups, and assemble them into an enlightening work. It would have been particularly cool, we thought, had a doctor chosen to turn a critical eye toward his or her own profession. An elucidation of physician faux pas was several decades overdue. Dumb doctors indeed. So we went about our own daily chores in medicine and waited. We waited and waited. And you know what? It just didn’t happen.

So who else might do such a project justice, if not doctors themselves? Well, nurses certainly could. Nobody on the planet, Lord knows, holds a more accurate view of inner sanctum lunacy than these talented professionals. It is nurses, after all, who are insulted and assaulted, spat upon, pushed aside, denigrated, groped and more, all on a daily basis. So much so that within the sequestered halls of medicine – and not a few court rooms – an embarrassing phrase is beginning to echo off the walls. It’s called “disruptive physician,” dumb doctor demeanor which encompasses a wide-range of child-like deportment, sort of like the sixth-grader who tends to get mean, throw things around the classroom and generally fails to play well with others. Academia is now replete with studies detailing the undeniable connection between nurses walking away from the profession, and physician foibles. (A politically correct term for dumb doctors) The resulting impact on patient outcomes is ugly and obvious. (See studies by Rosenstein, Russell & Lauve) Yet even nurses, for reasons unknown, elect to remain relatively silent on the dumb doctor syndrome they know so well. To be sure, a number of terrific exceptions have been penned over the years. (Condition Critical, by Echo Heron, RN, may well be the best of the best) Still, the ongoing circus of physician foul-ups, bloops and boo-boos rolls merrily along everyday, seriously under-published. No dumb doctor book extant, until ours, America's Dumbest Doctors, is released in '08.

And we’ve always wondered why. Why no exasperated pharmacist with a prescription-scribbled migraine had yet taken up the pen. Why no maddened physical therapist, O.R. tech, phlebotomist, administrator, x-ray pro, perfusionist, nor orderly has ever raged, “For God’s sake, enough dumb doctors!” and cleared the air.

For there exists, we now know, entire armies of health care experts with tales to hoist your hackles, but you would never locate Dumbest Doctors on the library shelf, until we wrote it.

So after 25 years, with our personal pile of funny little notes bulging from a dust-covered briefcase, it finally dawned. Okay, so maybe we’re slower than we ought to be. But the torch was ours to carry. Paramedics would just have to out the dumbest doctors in the USA. We, the ruffians in blue, those rogues of rescue, the only characters in the entire scheme of medicine who run around outside, faces awash in the fresh air of clarity. It does, in the end, make perfect sense. Who else orchestrates advanced emergency care with not a singular hospital staff, but dozens? Who else, by virtue of our nifty 24-hour shifts, is likely to be around at all, to witness bonehead moves by dumb doctors, at any hour of any day? Who else has the nerve to out dumb doctors?

And so it comes to pass, from our unparalleled perspective, that three unequivocal points ought now be carved into the record:

1. Some of the finest primates in our country can be found wearing
lab coats, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

2. Some of their wackiest peers graduated from the very same medical
schools. Yes, they're among the dumbest doctors we describe.

3. Some of the most egregious criminals in society scribe M.D. after
their names. And you bet they make the dumbest doctors litany too.

And we thought you might want to know a little more about the characters who make up our dumb doctors list. After all, have you checked yours, lately?

So stay tuned, friends, to much, much more. Trust us. We're just warming up when it comes to seriously, truly, dumb doctors.