Mumbai: In an incident which has sent shock waves in the medical fraternity, a DNB resident Deepak Kumar Singh was issued a memo by his Orthopedic HOD on the 1st day of his residency, after he showed up with a stethoscope around his neck in the OPD.
It is a known stereotype in medicine that Orthopedic Surgeons are considered rough, heavy drinkers, and with zero knowledge in internal medicine. Orthopedics as a branch has a reputation of not being a cerebral field but more of a mechanical job, with the only instruments needed by the surgeons being drills, hammers, chisels, screwdrivers and other metal hardware.
In an exclusive interview with the Quackdoses, Dr. Haddi Todjodkar – the HOD said, “In a career spanning 25 years, never have I seen an orthopedic resident with a stethoscope. Orthopedic surgeons, ECGs, stethoscopes can never be friends! What was he thinking; is he a dentist from the TV advertisements that he needs to show people that he is a doctor, or did he want to hear the patient’s heart sounds? For a real orthopedic surgeon, heart is only a soft tissue organ which keeps pumping antibiotic in the body. Even if he wanted to use it to give fitness for surgery to patients, for me, the only patient unfit for any bone surgery is a dead body.”
Unconfirmed sources have claimed that the resident after receiving the memo was later seen playing games on mobile with the anesthesiologists in the OT, and gossiping about female residents from Physiotherapy, Dermatology and Psychiatry.
