My DiCaprio Turn

"Catch me if You Can", right, the one with DiCarprio passing bad checks and faking being a pilot, doctor etc??

So it has been long enough since the actual incident to tell this story now, but being a doctor with a lot of in hospital experience DOES occasionally have it's unexpected benefits.

A patient of mine came in one day with pain.... Doesn't matter where.... suffice it to say that it concerned me very much because there was no injury and the pain was in a vascular distribution and I was very concerned about an aneurysm; but no one else was.... not a soul at the Military Treatment Facility could be bothered to see him in clinic and the ER, well, let's just not talk about them.

Fast forward one month. My patient, after some skillful maneuvering by moi, was transferred, based on MRI findings (which took three weeks to get), to one of the 'mini-meccas' down the road. It was a Friday. There was some concern that he needed an immediate neurosurgical procedure, but the neurosurgeon at the mini-mecca ran crying from the room after examining the patient (and the MRI and CT). And it was Friday, and Dr. Burned Hospitalist was in charge.

Scared neurosurgeon had requested transfer of the patient to the large mecca a mile and a half away... the one with residency programs in everything from pet psychiatry to psychic-gamma-knife-surgery. I call Burned Hospitalist on Saturday and explain that I am his patient's primary care physician and he tells me he is going to discharge him to follow up at the Mecca NS clinic on Monday because he 'can't transfer him on a weekend'. Fucking liar.

Well, he thought he had a weak sister on the phone but I asked Burned Hospitalist if my patient was,

1. Controlled on his pain medicine?
2. Set up with follow up with a particular physician?
3. Off all IV meds?

And the stuttering and stammering followed at which point he said he would just keep him there over the weekend until he could arrange a transfer on Monday (i.e. get someone else to do it).

Well, I don't live too far from the mini-mecca and I was in the area that night in pursuit of pleasure in the form of skillfully played live music, and after that bit of enjoyment I decided to drop by and see my patient. It was ten thirty in the PM.

The place was locked-down, but I called up to the floor and spoke with my patient's nurse and asked if they could bend the rules for me and she practically had me teleported up.

She was VERY happy to see me. "We have to get him transferred," she said, "He needs to be at the Mecca...." I agreed.

"Do you mind if I use your phone and do you mind if I, as his primary care physician (and with his consent and all) look at his chart?"

This I was allowed to do. And then I did this, I went to see my patient, I told him he was going to be transferred and I told him that when it happened he was not to answer too many questions. I extracted the same promise from the nursing staff. And I picked up the phone...

"Transfer center? Yes, hello, this is 911doc here and I am calling you from the mini-mecca... I have a patient that we would like to transfer to your Neurosurgical service.... No, tomorrow is fine... I just need to set it up.... yes, i will hold.... Oh hello Dr Superman, 911doc here.... yes.... yes... tomorrow is fine.... can I put you down as accepting? Thank you sir."

And it only took one more phone call the next day for me to affect the transfer of the patient on the weekend. Burned Hospitalist signed the papers and was none the smarter, but I'm still pissed he got paid for my skillful impersonation, but if you really think about it I didn't lie, I just Bill-Clinton'ed it... It's all in the parsing.

And by the way, the nurses high-fived me on the way out as they were not fond of Burned Hospitalist and could never get him to do jack shit. Imagine that...