There are all sorts of things that are inappropriate in the workplace. Laughter is not one of them. Happy, competent medical personnel fuel the best hospitals.
Deep background: Hospital gossip informed me that one of our maternity nurses had mentioned that her husband, a fighter pilot, knew how to ejaculate from his plane. It was part of his training. Ejaculation or ejection, is an amusing slip of the tongue, all by itself, but I elected to hang onto this juicy tidbit until a grand opportunity presented itself.
Background: Sometime later, a gentleman called our emergency room demanding that I bring my “infraray” to his home to make sure that he was not impregnated by the creatures that had been scanning his home. He further elaborated that he had done his best to defend himself against their scans by lining his home with aluminum foil and wearing a tinfoil hat.
One night, a couple of days later, while waiting on maternity for one of my patients to deliver, I told a couple of the nurses about the fellow with the tinfoil hat. At the end of my little story, the nurse with the fighter pilot husband asked, “I’m curious, what did you do with the tinfoil guy”? I replied, “You know, at first, I thought he was crazy, but I recently discovered that Canadian Armed Forces pilots are ejaculating from their jets. Sperm is falling from our skies. Knowing that, I can understand the guy’s fear of impregnation”. She had no idea I knew that story. My stored, juicy tidbit had the desired effect. All the nurses laughed and my victim both laughed and blushed as she fled the scene.
Are you wondering, what happened to the tinfoil hat fellow? After admission to psychiatry and days on medication, the psychiatrist discharged him with a prescription and appointments for outpatient followup.
Here’s another quick, admittedly off colour, maternity story. Nurses notes are a routine part of hospital care. They usually say things like, “Voided amber urine”. I had a brief discussion with the nurse who had written, “Vaginal pack out. Dr. Eves in.” I hoped she would change the word “in” to visited.
My favourite nurse’s note of all time came from one of my wife’s nursing students. “Today I learned that not all commode chairs have bedpans under them”. Picture that for a moment.