In general I despise people who use anonymity to post, on the web, nastygrams that they wouldn’t own up to in public. So it felt good to see him taken down a peg or two.

It’s interesting that someone who had such a high opinion of his own IQ didn’t understand that he wasn’t doing such a great job of keeping his tracks covered.

GAH!

some folks know not of
which they speak, yet they do not
stop. listen. and think.

It is my theory that alexhaley is the unholy spawn of Dr. Switch and octogalore.

…unless it involves some sort of bashing, preferably of the male variety, you’re not interested in discussing?

alexhaley, have you met octagalore ? perhaps you could start your own super-sucessful feminine qualities club together ?

Well, imagine my surprise seeing you here again. I acknowledge your apology, but really the problem is *not* that you expressed yourself badly or that other people’s feelings were hurt. The apology you offered, while redeeming your mother’s training with regard to manners, misses the point in much the same way your previous posts [on your site and here] miss the point.

The main issue for me and others is that your cute little rants reveal a huge professional flaw. It is the Patient’s right to choose. Again, the conditions of childbirth — an extraordinary personal event which occurs on far more levels than the doctor’s preferences and schedule — are conditions that Patients must choose.

All your blathering about how you know better isn’t just rude and uninformed. It is intensely disrespectful of the primacy of the Patient in medical care.

Doctors are employees of the patient. They are hired to provide expert advice — the whole range of options — and ensure medical safety. It is not part of the job description to decide there is one good way to give birth, and it is your way. You are not the consumer, nor do you have any personal idea what childbirth is like.

As should be clear from comments, even if you had experienced a childbirth or two, there are a wide variety of decisions patients make, and the experiences may vary not only from patient to patient, but from birth to birth by the same person.

Imagine a professional architect who felt the ultimate design for everyone was the ranch house; or an interior designer who so strongly believed in white walls that he calls anyone who disagrees a lesbian man-hating moron.

OK, not professional enough examples for you. There is a term for criminal defense lawyers who always think a guilty plea is the way to go — so much easier!! They are called “dump trucks.” Dump trucks earn their reputations by not respecting the client, and being too lazy [translation: “smart”] in individual cases to see if there is something to what the client is saying.

In my professional life, I once traveled to a distant city to hear a training talk by a very famous guy. His message was that nobody can do our work unless they have a pilot’s license, because he saw some deep parallels between the work and his completely-unrelated hobby of flying. The word we in the trenches have for people like that is “asshole.”

As for nurses, someone upstream commented on how generals need to listen to troops on the ground, and I agree. But I’d go farther — it really helps if the FancyPants Professional has actually done the jobs of support professionals. I like and respect secretaries and paralegals and investigators, because I’ve spent a lot of time photocopying and typing and researching and talking to clients and visiting witnesses in trailer parks, and it is often hard and not fun and there isn’t a lot of glory.

For you, a good dose of bedpan and IV duty, spending enough time with patients and their families to get to know them, contraction support for all the hours it takes, talking with patients about their birth experiences — the good, the bad, the ugly — who knows, it might humble you a bit, up your IQ, and help you begin to grow an empathy lobe. Also, you might begin to respect that the Patient is primary, that nurses know some things you don’t, and that all your smartness and feministishness are not the stars of the show.

p.s. — I skipped the whole troll thing, makes my brain explode.