The ‘L’ Word

“I need to do a procedure tomorrow at 7 a.m., and I’ll need a female present,” said Dr. Mister. “There may not be any nurses free.”“I have a female right here,” said Dr. Femme, gesturing at me.Huh? I was very slow to learn “the game,” and extra slow in my second summer of medical school, pre-clerkship. I didn’t instinctively know that if a doctor casually mentioned how cute lemmings looked jumping off a cliff, my job was to respond “Yes, doctor! Would you like me to lead the charge, doctor? I read a great study about lemmings yesterday and am applying for a grant to study them right after I jump off that cliff for you.”I also hadn’t clued in that as a female, I would be voluntold for extra work, like in this case, showing up an hour early for no extra pay and no real extra credit, since Dr. Mister was from another specialty. If I did it, it would be expected. If I didn’t do it, I would confirm every story about the dregs they let into medical school nowadays.This is a case when a mentor or a doctor parent would come in handy. Psst, Melissa, you want a good letter of recommendation. Lose the hour of sleep and say, “Can’t wait!”But I didn’t have a mentor or other older, wiser doctors in my family. I was flying solo. And I never liked being told what to do. If the other doctors had asked me, I probably would have said sure. The way it came up, I said something like, “Hang on, what does this entail?” Which made Dr. Mister uncomfortable and Dr. Femme angry before I said I’d be there.I showed up. They’d already started the procedure because, guess what, they did find a nurse before I arrived. And at the end of my rotation, I didn’t ask for a letter of recommendation from Dr. Femme, because I knew she’d call me the L word: Lazy.“In surgery, you’re not allowed to say you can’t do,” my friend told me once. “In internal medicine, you’re not allowed to say you don’t know.”In either case, you’re not allowed to be lazy. Lazy is one of the worst insults you can hurl at a doctor or doctor-to-be.I’m not fond of it myself. Personally, I believe it’s impossible to know everything, but as long as you try hard and keep learning, that’s the key. The student who golfs instead of clocking in a rotation? Not okay.But laziness is in the eye of the beholder. Once I figured out the game more, I realized I should’ve just said yes. Dr. Mister was a good guy trying to fit in an unexpected procedure for a patient before his other commitments. It wasn’t worth tarnishing my reputation because I was used to people asking me instead of telling me. Lesson learned.Killing Me Sloth-LY, my upcoming Hope Sze thriller, covers the sin of sloth. Which means I’ve been thinking a lot about laziness, both good and bad. Two things I find interesting in retrospect:1. Dr. Femme ran a very quiet clinic. I mean, so quiet that she played video games between patients. Even as a newbie, I noticed, and a nurse took me aside to explain, “The other doctor is on vacation. Dr. Other always covers all patients when Dr. Femme is on vacation, but Dr. Femme never covers Dr. Other’s patients.”It worked out nicely for Dr. Femme, didn’t it?2. Before you start yelling at me about what a bad student I am/was, one doctor recently posted about working to rule. Yes, Dr. Anon will see patients. But no more free teaching, meetings, committees, etc. And 150 people gave that post a thumbs up. Many commented that if doctors hadn’t let ourselves get pushed around so much, we’d have negotiated better deals decades ago. So instead of calling me the L word, maybe you could reframe it like, Hey, it’s good to have boundaries!I’ll say the blasphemy straight out: it’s healthy to rest. It’s healthy to sleep. It’s healthy to not to know or do 100% of the time.Where are you on the sloth scale, and why?

The ‘L’ Word

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Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes

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