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K Patrick McDonald

Recent Projects

Currently putting the finishing touches on the first book of its kind, a state-of-our-nation's highest-trained healthcare professonals, an expose of outlandish physician behavior - America's Dumbest Doctors. And if you think we aren't serious, you haven't met enough doctors.

Projects or Proposals Offered

America's Dumbest Doctors, a non-fiction, insider view of misbehavior, misadventure, screw-ups greed and murder, by physicians nationwide. This book is a 12-Chapter, multi-diminsional perspective by which the reader quickly learns that - in the realm of clinical diagnoses - A.D.D. no longer merely stands for Attention Deficit Disorder.

Searchable Keywords

Medical Expose Funny Dumb Doctors

Specialties or Categories of Interest

I have a keen eye for all medical misbehavior.

Experience, Credits, and/or Awards

The Author has written award-winning, firsthand accounts of disasters such as, "When Airplanes Fall" (PSA flight 182 crash in San Diego) & "Someday We'll Visit Yesterday."

Excerpts from Reviews or References

"As a surgical nurse and preoperative educator at Redlands Community Hospital for 12 years, I became almost calloused to disruptive doctor behavior. Mr. McDonald's book is accurate, well-written, and many years overdue." Cecilia Gray, RN, retired.

From The Book

AMERICA'S DUMBEST DOCTORS

“Stupid is as stupid does.”

Forest Gump

Introduction

We don’t know how you happened upon our little tirade, but we’re guessing you didn’t find it next to the magazines in a waiting room. Pity, because we can’t think of a better place for it. Although your personal bookshelf will do nicely, in which case you may file this one under Reality Check, if you like, because that’s precisely what this is. Rest assured, in the realm of clinical diagnoses, A.D.D. no longer merely stands for Attention Deficit Disorder.

Consider, if you would please, your first reaction to the following headline:

PHYSICIAN WHO STOLE CADAVER'S HAND TO LURE STRIPPER, ARRESTED

New Jersey Star-Ledger

March 12, 2007

Or how about this one?

DOCTOR WHO BLEW UP HOME TO SPITE HIS WIFE DIES

WTOL TV Toledo News

November 27, 2006

Some of you may wonder how America’s Dumbest Doctors came to be. It isn’t really that long a story. For years we waited patiently (no pun intended) for somebody of appropriate angst to come along, sort through the pyramid of Giza-sized piles of goof-ups, and assemble them into an enlightening work. It would have been particularly cool, we thought, had a doctor chosen to turn a critical eye toward his or her own profession. An elucidation of physician faux pas was several decades overdue. So we went about our own daily chores in medicine and waited. We waited and waited. And you know what? It just didn’t happen.

M.D. WITH BURRITO IN HIS PANTS FOUND GUILTY OF HARRASSMENT

Melbourne, Florida News

April 4, 2007

So who else might do such a project justice, if not doctors themselves? Well, nurses certainly could. Nobody on the planet, Lord knows, holds a more accurate view of inner sanctum lunacy than these talented professionals. It is nurses, after all, who are insulted and assaulted, spat upon, pushed aside, denigrated, groped and more, all on a daily basis. So much so that within the sequestered halls of medicine – and not a few court rooms – an embarrassing phrase is beginning to echo off the walls. It’s called “disruptive physician,” demeanor which encompasses a wide-range of child-like deportment, sort of like the sixth-grader who tends to get mean, throw things around the classroom and generally fails to play well with others. Academia is now replete with studies detailing the undeniable connection between nurses walking away from the profession, and physician foibles. The resulting impact on patient outcomes is ugly and obvious. (See studies by Rosenstein, Russell & Lauve)

Yet even nurses, for reasons unknown, elect to remain relatively silent on the absurdities they know so well. To be sure, a number of terrific exceptions have been penned over the years. (Condition Critical, by Echo Heron, RN, may well be the best of the best) Still, the ongoing circus of physician foul-ups, bloops and boo-boos rolls merrily along everyday, seriously under-published.

And we’ve always wondered why. Why no exasperated pharmacist with a prescription-scribbled migraine had yet taken up the pen. Why no maddened physical therapist, O.R. tech, phlebotomist, administrator, x-ray pro, perfusionist, nor orderly has ever raged, “For God’s sake, enough!” and cleared the air.

For there exists, we now know, entire armies of health care experts with tales to hoist your hackles, but you would never guess it by visiting the library.

So after 25 years, with our personal pile of funny little notes bulging from a dust-covered briefcase, it finally dawned. Okay, so maybe we’re slower than we ought to be. But the torch was ours to carry. Paramedics would just have to do it. We, the ruffians in blue, those rogues of rescue, the only characters in the entire scheme of medicine who run around outside, faces awash in the fresh air of clarity. It does, in the end, make perfect sense. Who else orchestrates advanced emergency care with not a singular hospital staff, but dozens? Who else, by virtue of our nifty 24-hour shifts, is likely to be around at all, to witness bonehead moves by doctors, at any hour of any day?

(From Chapter #8 - WHAT DID HE SAY?)

“Medical language is replete with blizzards of linguistic and conceptual confusion.”

Author unknown, but not unwise

Yeah, and sometimes it’s just mean . . .

(As told to a patient): “As an obese woman, you will likely outlive your obese spouse. You’ll have a difficult time establishing new relationships, because most men are completely negative to obese women. Let’s face it. If your husband dies tomorrow, who would want you?”

Dr. Terry Bennett, New Hampshire

“Going through a natural opening – such as the rectum or vagina –

to get to the gall bladder, is being looked excitedly at by a lot of people."

Dr. Mark Besler, National Orifice Surgical Consortium

(Sounds like a hoot of a fraternity to us)

“A man comes running into the E.R. and yells, “My wife’s going to have a baby in the cab!”

I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the woman’s dress and started removing her panties. Suddenly I noticed there were several taxis out there, and I was in the wrong one."

Dr. Mark McDonald, San Antonio, Texas

And so it comes to pass, from our unparalleled perspective, that three unequivocal points ought now be carved into the record:

1. Some of the finest primates in our country can be found wearing lab coats, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

2. Some of their wackiest peers graduated from the very same medical schools.

3. Some of the most egregious criminals in society scribe M.D. after their names.

And we thought you might want to know a little more about them.

Throughout this book, oftentimes, you’ll notice the pronoun ‘he’ when a physician is referenced and from that, you might suspect we’ve been quick to excoriate only the males of the profession. Au contraire. Our research has encompassed 706 medical facilities in 31 states. Every attempt to uncover female physician gaffes has been made. Nothing would please us more than to include an entire litany of lady doc goof-ups. Sadly, we just couldn’t find very many.

So what do we mean by “dumb?” According to Webster’s Dictionary, the concept of “dumb” covers a range of human conduct, from the inability to speak, to outright stupidity. Words like imbecile and fool come to mind – generally not common descriptors for those holding the highest of health care degrees. But of course, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Doctors are supposed to be reasonably bright. We know this because they miss few opportunities to tell us so. They comprehend all those big words, they peer deep into our psyche and sometimes we actually let them cut us up while we sleep. We’d better hope they’re smart. But the fallacy is the accepted notion that physicians are inherently smarter than their patients. In fact, this just isn’t true. As nearly as we can determine, the mean IQ of the typical doc falls in the range of 108-129. And while these numbers are assuredly nothing to sniff at, you’ll find truck drivers and teachers, puppeteers and talk show hosts, painters, shoplifters, police dispatchers and EEO managers, who fall into the same span of smartness. It is wholly illogical to presuppose that your private doc is brainier than the kid behind the counter at Poco Taco. The actual findings support the contrary. And while those of brilliant mind often do lean toward medicine as a career – and thank heaven for that – millions of other folks, citizens of equal intellect and foresight, find themselves filling every other niche in society, for one reason or another.

Putting it another way, you and your favorite doc most likely fall within plus or minus five IQ points of each other. And that’s the truth.

Now, we all know how much fun it can be to watch morons acting, well, moronic. Sometimes you wish you had a bag of popcorn so you could truly enjoy the show. Stupidest Criminals is, is it not, high entertainment in some circles. But our take on the matter is that it’s not merely fun, but downright important, to keep an eye out for the expected smart ones around us whose screw-ups can cause us pain. So our definition of “dumb” is this: If, through your own idiocy, ego-edema or greed, you injure the undeserving; if you are a workplace bully throwing tantrums, embarrassing your mother and bringing shame to an honorable profession; if your juvenile posturing causes Aesculapius to roll over in his tomb; if you are so unimaginably lame after achieving a medical school diploma that you get yourself tossed into prison, then you are indeed “dumb.” And if you have somehow managed to make it into this book after we turned thumbs down on literally hundreds of deserving but less scintillating characters, then you are without question one of America’s Dumbest Doctors.

And if per chance you are not, then by all means we applaud the dignity you bring to society’s table. Humanity needs you. So why not pour a drink, put your feet up and have a good time. Think about all the stuffed shirts with stethoscopes that you’ve experienced in your own life, thugs in scrubs you’d like to poke in the eye. Then go forth and multiply. The gene pool welcomes you. And trust us. You are about to meet a few nutcases who would do us all a favor by not procreating at all.

For more on the occasionally funny, always enlightening matter of physican foibles, visit: www.Americasdumbestdoctors.com

About The Author

The Author graduated from UCSD La Jolla School of Medicine, Advanced Prehospital EMS program,in the late '70s. He has treated more than 12,200 emergency patients around the world,as a Paramedic, Flight Medic & Swiftwater rescuer; He responded with Doctors Without Borders to the Mexico City Earthquake in 1985 that took 25,000 lives; has trained rescuers in Vietnam, Thailand & Laos; has worked as a Set Medic for such entertainers as Englebert Humperdinck, Paul Anka & the Commodores.

Copyright 2007-2008, K Patrick McDonald (Expires November 26, 2008)

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