Today's post is written to express my admiration for another local neurologist, Dr. I. V. Leeg, for his remarkable dedication to principles.
Dr. Leeg attended a well-known college and medical school. While the majority of people I've met who attended his school act like decent human beings, Dr. Leeg realizes that being in massive educational debt up to your eyeballs is worth nothing if you don't continuously remind other docs that they're road apples compared to you.
Dr. Grumpy went to public schools all the way up until medical school, when I went to a small private medical school no one else on Earth has heard of except for the 6 of us who graduated from there. My reason for going there? It was the only medical school I got into.
When I first met Dr. Leeg I tried to make idle chatter with him for a few minutes, and asked him what had brought him to this neck of the woods. Trying to be polite, he said "to improve the crappy quality of neurological care in Grumpyville."
Last year Dr. Leeg was fired from a hospital case because the family thought he was arrogant and condescending. They then asked for me to take over. In his sign-off note, he kindly put in the chart that he'd been "dismissed in favor of a physician of lesser education."
Recently a patient transferred care from Dr. Leeg to my practice, so I sent over a routine request for records. A week later we received them in the mail. At the end of the chart notes was a phone memo that said, "the patient has transferred care to Dr. Grumpy. I personally called to warn her of the risks involved in seeing a physician who is a product of public education. She understood, and unreasonably insisted on continuing with her plan to leave my practice".
So here's a salute to Dr. Leeg, for his remarkable devotion to making sure that us lesser physicians know our place in the world.
Hits home. My son followed your path. Med school in AZ, residency same place, surgical same place. Fellowship at Emory. Now has his own plastic surgery practice. He faced the same hurdles.
ReplyDeleteWhat an utter twat!
ReplyDeleteThis month's alumni newsletter is going to be lit.
ReplyDeleteIt’s the same the whole world over. We have such characters on the east side of the pond as well. Usually of Oxbridge, Edinburgh or some of the London med schools origin. Guy’s, Bart’s or Tommy’s in particular. Two things said of a minority of Bart’s graduates are “You can always tell a Bart’s man, but you can’t tell him much” and “ How do you tell a Bart’s man?” - “You don’t have to, he will soon tell you”. (The exhibitors of the unpleasant characteristic described by Grumpy are usually men, in my experience)..
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer - I’m an Edinburgh medical graduate and is is only a small minority of the graduates of the listed Brit med schools who display this type of arrogance. I do confess to once having attempted to put down a bloviating Bart’s man by commiserating with him; “I’m so sorry that someone of your obvious intellect didn’t get the grades to get into Edinburgh”. Water off a duck’s back.
These folk are just one of the proctalgogenic curses one has to live with. They are found in every profession.
Usually people like that have a very low self esteem, and act like that because they know, deep down, that everyone else knows it. Pitying them is the best course of action (and somewhat infuriating to them because they project such a large ego).
ReplyDeleteI dunno, seems like someone is gittin' upitty.
ReplyDeleteAll I can do is paraphrase Andy Syms... "What an utter TWIT!!!"
ReplyDeleteI work with the father of one of those doctors. Positively eye-rolling.
ReplyDeleteShocking that he can even talk to his patients with that silver spoon in his mouth.
ReplyDeleteTo Anonymous @7:19 am:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the new vocab word: proctalgogenic.
Bless you! I have encounter at least 2 arses whose "superiority" outweighed their knowledge and humanity. I will never accept care from such animals again, ever. If they have no respect for me or their colleagues (read nurses), then I have absolutely no use for them.
ReplyDeleteWell, I graduated high school - barely.
ReplyDeleteYou're a good man, Grump. Have a great day today!
4th tier private law school grad. Public every other degree. I have mad benefits, work 40 hours a week, make more hourly with zero overhead than most. No regrets. Except maybe picking law over medical school.
ReplyDeleteWhen my daughter was three years old, she had a seizure from low blood sugar. Just to be sure, her doctor ordered an EEG. We had to drive 45 miles to the nearest neurologist, and his diagnosis was that she had a possible "mass lesion" and needed a CT scan. The doctor refused to enter the same room with us, not even to say, "I'll send the results to your doctor." But she was fine, life went on, we weaned her off the phenobarbital. Three years later, she had another seizure, also due to low blood sugar, but fortunately, we now had a local neurologist. So, we went to him, had a nice chat in his office, another EEG to be sure, another year of meds and she was fine. This doctor asked who had we seen before. We told him, and his response was, "Oh, THAT guy. We're still cleaning up his messes." Turned out that the "mass lesion" diagnosis was, um, exaggerated to get us to help pay for his shiny new CT scanner. Ours was not the first diagnosis he had "adjusted" to get more money. He was now several states away and was sued for malpractice by someone else (he lost). Your Dr. Leeg sounds kinda like a THAT guy.
ReplyDeleteIt's so sad, really, how some people have only their own opinions of themselves to maintain the illusion of superiority rather than data representing actual facts and reasonable metrics of skill and ability. Poor Dr. Leeg. I really do feel for his superiority complex, it can only keep him going for so long before it shatters into smithereens.
ReplyDeleteI like what Anonymous at 12:47 said lol - the spoon needs to be stuck in another orifice, in my opinion...
ReplyDeleteI am a retired medical transcriptionist who only graduated from high school, and was told by more than one M.D. that "anyone can do your job," but I noticed that when I offered to let them try their reaction was akin to me having an anaconda under my desk. A few of them could be taught; one guy who complained about the quality of his transcribed dictations was got to listen to himself dictate, and to his credit he was so horrified that he redid that dictation and seriously cleaned up his act. Later he left me a very nice note thanking me for the good job I did on a complicated case he'd dictated. I saw to it that one ended up in my personnel file.
ReplyDeleteI would like to join you in a salute to this Dr Leeg -- with a single upraised middle finger. --Retired CMT (40 years)
ReplyDeleteSo...has this guy learned anything after he got his med school acceptance letter? He seems to be stuck reliving the moment he got the thick envelope, Groundhog Day style.
ReplyDeleteNeurologist? Sounds more like a proctologist who sees himself in every exam.
ReplyDeleteMust be a few like that, they sound like the Dr Glaucomflecken character
ReplyDeleteAbout half the docs here treat other healthcare professionals that way...
ReplyDeleteWhat?! You mean that I've been reading the blog of the product of a lesser medical school all this time???? I cannot believe this. I want my money back. In fact I think I want to sue you for misdirection. Yours from the thoracic cavity. Dr Boop
ReplyDeleteNot everyone is admitted to the public pharmacy school where I received my advanced degree, and it's been top tier for years, and it's just over on the other side of town where we've lived the past 30 years or so.
ReplyDeleteAnd, anyone could get into the public pharmacy school (if I could!) where I received my first pharmacy degree. There were 26 in that first graduating class. We had/have some of the best professors in the whole U.S.A. By the time we graduated we knew our stuff backwards and forward as we pretty much received undivided attention when these instructors weren't attending to their research projects or writing textbooks for other schools. I figured I received a fine public State school education, my patients deserve the best I can give, considering they paid for it.
Iknowyou. You and I graduated together I think , night school class of 1986. When I’m feeling kind of cocky, I like to tell people that I pass the bar exam on my first attempt, unlike Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Kamala Harris now that has a tendency to piss off of Few folks. LivingWell is the best revenge and I have to say that my career has ups and downs but I’m balance. It’s been a great ride and I am eternally grateful for the way it turned out.
ReplyDelete