One of the staff physicians I've been working with has a list of rules. One of these rules is to know the names and relations of everyone in the patient's room. This is a great rule which I intend to keep once I'm out in "real" practice. It will hopefully keep me from getting myself into those uncomfortable situations. For example, one time I was taking care of an older middle-aged man. In the room was a young woman who looked as if her driver's license was fresh off of the press. She sat in the corner looking totally disinterested and irritated that she had been dragged along for this. When I came back into the room she was no longer sitting cross-legged in the corner texting away so I asked the patient where his daughter went. The patient immediately broke eye contact with me and stared across the room toward the empty chair with an awkward smile. My cheeks began to fill with red, hot blood as he replied, "That's not my daughter, that's my girlfriend." Oops! Open mouth, insert foot.
Over this last month on Labor and Delivery knowing names has become even more important. That is, I've learned to never assume that the guy in the room is the dad-to-be, or the husband, or the boyfriend. It is also essential to know the person in the room that got you all there in the first place - the baby! One of the first questions I ask when I walk into a labor room is if we know if the baby is a boy or a girl. (Nino or nina? is sufficient in my broken spanish to figure it out for my spanish-speaking moms.) This question is then followed by, "Have you picked a name?" or "Does he/she have a publicly announced name?" Often the response is a big smile and a glance over toward the significant other who is nervously rocking in the chair beside her.
The names of the babies I've met so far have been the standard fare. Most of them have been cute, and a handful of names had been passed down through the family. Nothing too unusual. However, this afternoon while I was sitting at the nurse's station, we got to talking about all of the unusual names they've seen. Wow! Unfortunately, my malpractice lawyers wouldn't appreciate me listing patient's names on here for the world to see, but trust me, people are creative! Creative, and well... actually, let's just leave it at that. Creative.
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