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Comment by utopcell | Hacker News Reader

Tl;Dr: ~30% of births are C-section, and hospitals prefer early morning operations.

And from anecdote, so should mothers. Early morning (~8AM) you get the A staff at their prime and are often the first case so it is usually timely.

The worst time is 6:30AM (or whenever half an hour before changeover is). You either get C staff and/or people who have been awake for 24 hours. The surgeon probably called that time so they could book night rates.

Additionally, you're not supposed to eat before a C-section.

If you have yours at 8am, then your last meal was dinner, maybe 12-13 hours ago. If you have yours at 4pm, then you might not have eaten for 20 hours.

Surgeons usually prefer to start operating before 8AM. They are awake, the OR is clean, the staff is fresh, and they have all day afterward to monitor for complications (and jet out early if everything goes well). The worst surgery times are probably starting around 7PM and going until 6AM. Those are usually emergencies, the OR has been in use all day, the surgeon probably has less experience as they are earlier in their career, the preferred materiel might be waiting to be autoclaved, etc.

In my experience with surgery for family members, surgeons want scheduled surgeries early because they have a shit ton to do. The brain surgeon was rallying the troops at 5:30am and was pissed they were already behind on the first surgery. He needed to do the scheduled surgeries early because he needed to have a certain amount of time for emergency surgeries. If those occurred early, then he could push the scheduled surgeries later. If the emergencies occurred later, then he’s done with the scheduled surgeries by then.

Then in the late morning and rest of the day, it was patient rounds and consultations, teaching at the local medical school, and performing research. Guy was a machine and on another level. I don’t know when he was ever able to have a non-medical or patient related thought.

Perhaps while playing rock music, designing land-speed record-breakers or saving the world from extra-dimensional alien invasion.

Sorry, couldn't resist the Buckaroo Banzai call-out.

Next time try harder.

The surgeon is usually an OBGYN. At least that’s what’s most common at the hospital we had our 3 at. It was the attending OBGYN from the practice my wife goes to. They are both run by the same place.

Not sure how it works for small hospitals.

Just had baby Dr wanted to do it at 7:00 and the hospital required us to be there at 5:00am. Dr showed up half an hour late.

The reason he scheduled for then was so he could still do office hours. His office closes at noon. Don't like the guy.

You have to remember that you are not the only patient in the hospital. A Caesarean section requires a lot of setup including OR, anesthesiologist, ensuring adequate care for the newborn, etc. Any of these can cause a delay. Of course there is other cases triaged by urgency like crash sections. It would make no sense to show up to the OR 30 minutes before you can begin operating. An elective Caesarean section will always get bumped for emergencies.

Hospitals and the medical profession have a lot of work, and for efficiency they stack the work up. A rule of thumb whenever dealing with a hospital is that everything will be massively later than you expect. It's a good idea to set your expectations ahead of time so that a bit of a wait does not take you by surprise. For a hospital procedure, half an hour late is pretty much right on time.

Congrats on the baby!

You have to register with the hospital. You have to change into a hospital gown. You have to get an IV and labs (which take an hour to come back). You have to do a nursing intake interview (which is surprisingly long).

I'm an anesthesiologist. My wife needed surgery. And the surgeon is a friend of mine from childhood and needed to leave that afternoon. We had a free OR. Even then, it took 2.5 hrs to get her registered, up to the surgical floor, and to the OR.

So, maybe that doctor is a jerk, but realistically, it takes a while even if you have the inside track on everything.

What exactly is the complaint?

File a grievance with a regulatory body.

The amount of effort to file a grievance against the guy because he was late seems a little extreme. Especially since I haven't slept in 5 days now because of the aforementioned beby.

Although it was incredibly telling when I asked the nurse. "Hey so I know nurses have a list of which Drs. Are a-holes and which ones are good to work with, is our Dr an a-hole?" She responded by saying she couldn't answer that one way or another.

That's fucking hilarious. I filed a grievance when the medical professionals performed care on me against my (fully conscious and alert) consent, without a warrant, and without a court order nor arrest -- at the direction of a federal officer who had me "detained" but not "arrested" because there was no probable cause of a crime.

I wrote an incredibly detailed, 100 page report with several witnesses painstakingly describing the violation and details and associated license #. Included was my full medical report where licensed doctors clearly noted I had denied consent for care. Included on the report was the signed, official report showing care was rendered without consent.

After what I imagine was about 5 seconds of glancing at my report, a low IQ triage official who worked for the state board claimed anything the medical professionals do are excepted because they magically become police officers, except ones exempt to the 4th amendment, if they do anything wrong. So you can file a grievance, and an idiot from the board will probably tell you to fuck off or invent a fake rule, and there is no appeals process.

> . I filed a grievance when the medical professionals performed care on me against my (fully conscious and alert) consent, without a warrant, and without a court order nor arrest -- at the direction of a federal officer who had me "detained" but not "arrested" because there was no probable cause of a crime.

That’s more of a civil battery (and possibly also federal civil rights) lawsuit than a professional complaint situation.

You may be able to sue the government for the violation of your civil and constitutional rights and the damages it and its doctors caused to you. That will be true regardless of whether the doctors themselves violated any ethical rules. I suggest you contact a competent lawyer in your jurisdiction if you are interested in pursuing this.

Is there a link to the 100 pages so that the rest of us can be forewarned by your testimony?

Possibly, it will take me quite awhile to fully redact it of PII.

I hadn't considered that. Hope it works out for you. That was a brief moment of trauma reading your story.

Not just hospitals, but my N=1 anecdote having seen a C-section in the afternoon vs morning is that the doctors are sharper and more focused in the morning.

Afternoon, after the first cups of coffee have worn off, and after the natural exhaustion from a long shift is not when you want to be having a C section.

Additionally, ~18% percent are induced labors resulting in more daytime births.

Thank you.

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