Tales from Residency: ADD

I had one attending in residency who was very nice, but was also as distractible as my 2 year old child. It was literally like being supervised by a 2 year old.

One day I was doing EMGs in the afternoon, and he was over 40 minutes late getting back from lunch. I didn't know how to work his EMG machine that well so I was a little stuck. When he finally got back, I ran to his office, practically in tears: "I can't figure out how to enter the patient in the computer and he's been waiting there for half an hour!"

"Okay, I'll come help you right now," the attending said.

We started walking down the hallway to the EMG room, but then one of the other residents named Doug passed by us.

"Oh, was that Doug?" the attending asked me. "I need to tell him something really important."

"Uh, sure..."

The attending hurried down the hallway in the opposite direction after Doug. "Doug!" the attending said. "I was reading something you would be interested in."

"What?" Doug asked.

"In Korea," he said, "they made a new kind of machine that helps you tell apart genuine laughter from fake laughter. Isn't that interesting?" (Doug is Korean.)

I take it back. I think my daughter actually was LESS distractible than this attending.