With no power comes great responsibility

Here's a brief summary of medical school clinical rotations: you get thrown into a hospital where you have no real privileges, and pretty much everything you do has to be approved/co-signed by a resident or attending. Seriously, you can't even sneeze without some crazy doctor popping up and asking if your resident said it was okay to sneeze.

And I'm okay with that. It's all part of climbing the medical school ladder, the top of which leads you to the bottom of the residency ladder, the top of which leads you to the bottom of the attending ladder, etc. The problem is, we students look like doctors - we wear white coats*, we carry stethoscopes, we wear assless chaps. As such, I've grown accustomed to saying such phrases as "Sorry, I'm not a doctor," "I would do it if I could, but let me go get a resident to write a real order," and "Why are you touching me there - that's my special area."

And again, I'm okay with a little confusion. The problem is that when you're rocking the white coat, you're expected to act like a doctor. That means: no swearing**, no firing my pistols wildly into the air, no sniffing babies for that New Baby Smell™ without parental approval, and certainly no smoking meth on the job**.

But here's the real dilemma and the crux of this post: what's a student to do when leaving the hospital bathroom? When you're wandering around the hospital with enuresis and encopresis, trips to the bathroom are many. And let me tell you, these bathrooms are not the cleanest of places. Oftentimes it will look like somebody stuck a firecracker in a Snickers and ran off giggling. Alternatively, that person was trying to fill water balloons with yellow food-coloring and didn't care much for accuracy.

Then your humble narrator walks into this train-wreck of sanitation and is left with two options. Option the first, leave the bathroom and have the person who is invariably waiting right outside go in after and think that my pelvis exploded. Option the second, and I'm gagging just to mention it, clean it up. Oh gad, I need to vomit...

I'm back. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind cleaning bathrooms. I clean my own bathroom***, but when I do I'm wearing a Hazmat suit. And I'm not cleaning up a strangers lemonade for no pay. I'm already paying tens of thousands in tuition to work 80+ hours a week for no compensation - I draw the line at a forced janitorial clerkship.

So basically, there is probably a legion of nurses in the Phoenix area who think I have the worst aim in the world. But what should I do? I guess the only solution is a Foley catheter and leg bag. Then I'll never have to go to the bathroom. Brilliant!

* please don't get me started on the short coat/long coat debacle. Nurses don't know that rule, and the only people who care are extremely insecure doctors.
** totally not true for attendings, but true for everyone else
*** no I don't