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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

>the doctor then ordered someone else not in the room to come and get me a glass of water //

It seems possible that was a hygiene issue. For example the doctor knew that he'd need then to wash his hands again (possibly twice, once before going to the cupboard, once after), or change his gloves, before continuing with your consultation?

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Another alternative that I've run into. Visiting a doctor friend of mine. She needed to deliver some papers to another room and summoned the nurse for that. I joked that why you can't do that yourself (omg) and she replied that the nurses start to complain if you do stuff that's earmarked to them. It might be that it's because they're in a union or it's a company policy. Who knows, I never asked. But the point was that the nurses wouldn't appreciate it if she did it herself.

That's a very american thing. I remember reading about engineers from Germany who worked with NASA engineers on a project. The americans were surprised that when something was wrong the germans just took a wrench to fix it where for the americans it was policy to call a technician.

From my own experience the US is a weird mix of "can do" attitude on the one hand with strict hierarchies and enforced policies on the other hand.

We're all terrified of doing something wrong and losing our livilihood, if not our freedom, over it. Or of doing something right but having something unfortunate happen anyway, and not having followed the proper blame-deflecting or blame-halting procedures, and so suffering for it. Seriously.

It's not necessarily an ego or union thing. It's more of a protocol thing. The nurse needs to know what papers have been signed and generally where the patients are in terms of paperwork. I'm a medical student, and I've been amazed at how efficiently the inefficient system in an outpatient clinic works. There's a very specific protocol that all the assistants, nurses, and doctors adhere to, and any deviation from the protocol seems to halt the entire system. If the doctor in your scenario moved the papers herself, the nurse would be out of the loop. The papers probably signified that your patient visit was almost over, and the nurse needs to be aware of that so she can get the next patient moving.

No it wasn't a situation like that. It was just that some papers needed to be delivered to someone (don't want to go into details). There were two relevant people: the doctor and the destination. There was no need for the nurse other than some agreement between either the company or the union.

That would still not trump patient comfort. It's ego all over again, now from a different angle.

I am a doctor, and this was the first thought that came to my mind

It could have been but it wasn't. He wasn't in scrub and besides doctors are required to wash their hands between patients anyway and he'd touched other objects in the room already.

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