Medical Practice in the 1970s: A Doctor or a Saint?

In the 1970's things were vastly different in medicine and nursing as they are today. This is relatively obvious with both fields making changes and new discoveries daily.

"In the day", we were still short handed; yet, someone decided that wasn't a problem and didn't see raising salaries as a solution. We had emergency room physicians in hospital from about 6:00 pm on Friday until 6:00pm on Sunday.

I cannot stress what a luxury that was. To get a patient in the ER and be able to call the Dr.'s lounge and have a doctor come down within 5 minutes was heavenly. We were used to having a local physician "on call", and he or she would take their grand ole' time getting there.

There was one physician who was notorious for being late. I had a friend and patient one day who broke his leg. I called this notorious figure of a doctor, and he said he would be there in about 30 minutes. I did this at least four times; each time having to explain the delay the best I could to my friend. His final response was, "Yea, I've heard about this place".

"This place!" I thought. It is not this place. We have done everything within our power to move the moon and stars for you...can't you see it is the doctor? It is his choice not to show up.

This particular doctor could be four hours late with a hemorrhaging patient, walk in the room and light up the place with his "bedside manner". Everything would be okay, then. The patient would immediately forget about the four hour wait and grovel over the "god" that just walked in the room.

This guy would see the patient, and say," Mine will be $20.00," expecting payment right then (ER docs billed separately from the hospital, and I really don't blame them because they got stiffed quite often; with the exception of the next tactic). Many times the patient would say he or she didn't have the cash on them right now. Then this doc would open his wallet and ask them which bank they used. Boy, did that catch them off guard! It didn't matter which bank they used; he had a counter check in his wallet from every bank in the county. If they said, "American Trust", by golly, he would pull out an American Trust blank check and hand it to them and say," Fill this out, please". Thank you very much.

You might think this tactic a bit cruel, and he had more tricks up his sleeve, but he was still iconic. The patient remained all smiles as if an aura of beatification were among them. It made me want to vomit.