A Meeting Of The Minds

Last summer, accompanying Mama to her 60th high-school reunion in Bath, we stayed with one of her classmates/her husband on their homestead. They were warm and gracious hosts.

But there was a sadness in the house. As Mama had explained to me before we arrived, many years ago, the couple had lost their only son in college (they have daughters) . . . while he was at home on break . . . to a sudden illness . . . the kind that can be treated if caught in time . . . but is often fatal if it is not. The young man died in a small Eastern N.C. hospital. His Father blames the "country doctor" who did not come in or answer the nurses' calls in what he thought was a timely fashion before the boy "crashed" and coded, and was transferred out to a bigger/bluer hospital - where he later died.

Mama warned me that being a doctor was not a "plus" in the old man's eyes, and that he could be "gruff" and blunt when the subject of hospitals or religion came up.

For tragically, when he lost his son, he lost his faith in God . . . even as his wife hung onto hers for dear life. It was most evident at the reunion. When a gospel group contracted to sing for the assemblage began to perform, he stoically got up and went outside to sit in his car.

Of course, we got on famously. I have a soft spot for curmudgeons. I listened to him tell many a story about my Pops.

I told Mama afterwards that I just felt like if a doctor . . . any doctor really (it didn't have to be one of the physicians involved . . . who are likely long dead anyway) . . . would just apologize to this man, and tell him that what happened to his son was wrong and should not have happened, it might go a long way towards healing the wound. I thought long and hard about doing it myself (I actually did have a long conversation with his wife - which seemed to help her), but a good opportunity never seemed to open up . . . and I wanted to leave doors open.

The memory came back to me last week in a slightly different context.

It's contract renewal time (I negotiate my own), and I spent an hour last Wednesday hammering things out with the administrator of a new physician's group that has taken over the employment and independent contracts at the small Eastern N.C. hospital where I currently work.

There were some sticking points. Fortunately, I know the guy fairly well . . . from a previous assignment . . . and we've always had a fairly open and honest relationship . . . sometimes brutally honest. I respect him as an administrator, and that's saying a lot.

I don't envy him right now in his new job. He's gonna catch it from all sides.

He has even visited Housecalls, and spent some time on the sidebar reading about my experience with the hometown hospital.

(As an aside, the "parent company" has known about my blogging for a very long time . . . and it doesn't really care . . . as long as I do my job, and don't breech patient confidences or say nasty things about the hospital. Of course, if you treat me right, I don't have nasty things to say - a point that was ALWAYS lost on the nimnuls running Randolph.)

This guy gets it. And during the meeting, he made a point of telling me that he got it. Plainly and simply, I was shafted. Malice was clearly involved. It should not have happened the way it happened. Ergo, I have lingering "commitment" and "trust" issues which can color my interaction with "the suits".

But it's within a good suit's job description not to let those issues hinder a productive working relationship with a good doctor.

Because he gets it, he could laugh (fairly heartily) when, during the conversation, I reminded him that it was my general belief that if a hospital administrator's lips were moving he/she was lying.

Of course, he was compelled to defend his own. It was a valiant effort in the face of my considerable experience to the contrary. I allowed him to do it without much argument.

It was a good meeting. Neither one of us left the table completely happy. But we can still work together. Such is the nature and art of negotiation (as opposed to the Randolph method of mowing people down and then lying about it).

But the best part of the meeting was actually not sealing the deal. The best part of the meeting was hearing someone in a suit say, "You were done wrong. It should NEVER have happened."

My fondest dream is to one day hear someone in Asheboro say it without making them say it.

But either way works for me.