She Won
I watched a bewildered young intern try to examine a drunken patient in the Red Blanket area. A Chicano nurse double talked to the patient in Spanish, telling him to lie still or she would cut off his hair, but with the tone of "I really don't mean
it." Earlier the man had fallen down many flights of steps. He said his back was broken, yet was thrashing about on the gurney. Finally the doctor walked away saying, "When he can lay still, I'll examine him." The nurse then asked anot
her doctor to see the patient, but the intern said he'd try again. Later she told me that the intern was not sensitive to Chicanos and she was fighting for Chicana liberation. She really like the young Caucasian doctor and only wanted him to pay more att
ention to her.. .but he didn't catch on.
The next patient was an elderly woman with pneumonia. There was an ulcer on her buttocks. The intern tried to get a stool sample with a new teyin paper. It didn't work. The nurse took the temperature with an oral thermometer, but the intern told her it wouldn't work, because the woman was breathing through an oxygen mask with her mouth open. An accurate reading of the thermometer would be impossible, so she must try a rectal thermometer. That got even with her. She, however, had written transporta tion orders for the chart. He said, "You're smarter than I." She grinned. He had noticed her.
Why is he so special, someone couldn't lie to him!
The intern came out of another examining room saying to the patient there, "When you can stop lying to me, I'll come back and examine you." I scolded him, "Why are you so special, someone couldn't lie to you!"
Then an older nurse walked by. She was unmarried and was the one who had locked up my purse when I came. At first I thought she looked out of sorts because of the frustration of trying to work with so many patients. Then I found out that she had been
teased by the young doctors while they were examining a nude man. "Bet you have never seen that before!" Perhaps she was just passing on her frustration to the next below her in line when she called one of the black patients a "colored bo
y." When she left, two paramedics told me that this same young Chicano nurse had been picking on them, too. But one of them said she had been right, for the other had discussed a "case" in front of the "case." The "caught&
quot; paramedic said, "Well, the patient was too far out of it to
hear.
They had a hard time
suturing her up."
Then another alcoholic came in from the street, supposedly knocked down. He had walked out of another hospital the night before, went to a bar, and now found himself here, not knowing how he had arrived. He was so drunk, he said, "You're beautiful ." I was standing alongside a back clerk and teased back, "Which one of us?" The clerk said she had just come upon the scene and bowed out of such limelight. The staff and paramedics at County were rising, young middle-class Chicano and Black people, who are poised and have a good self image, enough to see the humor of the patient.
"The patient was too far out of it to hear."
The physician was now scolding the patient about trying to kill himself drinking. He called the other hospital to inform them of their patient's whereabouts. They had not missed him so the patient was added to the Alcoholic Ward at County.
Department of Emergency Medicine
