You know you are a rural doc when. . .
Can J Rural Med vol 3 (1):33
© 1998 Society of Rural Physicians of Canada
We welcome war stories and other anecdotes about being a rural doc. Please send your submissions to the Editor: Box 1086, Shawville QC J0X 2Y0
or email them.
You know you're a rural Doc when:
- Your patients think you also pull teeth.
- Your patients try to get medical advice for their cow.
- You get gifts of fiddleheads and moose meat in the fall.
- Drug reps love to drive to your office for the scenery.
- You know where most of your patients live and none of them have street addresses.
- If you can't get a patient on the phone, your secretary knows which people in several different settlements to call to find them.
- The roads you drive on are smoothest when there is a good base of snow.
- You have more colleagues on the Internet than in the next 3 counties.
Kendrick Lacey
Stanley, NB
You know you are a rural Doc when:
- You did a delivery last night at some time past midnight but you can't remember if it was a boy or girl, calf or child.
- An old family friend is passing through town, stops at a service station and is personally directed to your office because the attendant is your patient and he wants to be of service.
- You come home from holidays and you catch your locum driving your tractor . . . chopping your wood . . . pruning your apple trees . . . or sitting in your hot-tub watching the stars.
- You feel bereft and destitute without your "old" truck, your tractor, your chainsaw.
- Your older brother tells you that a bit of wood-chopping and shovelling manure is good for the body and the soul.
- When the birthing problems of Simmental are part of your coffee conversations.
- You don't know what the markets are doing or What's Hot/What's Not, but you know it is a good year for peas and the fish are biting because the black ants are flying!
Mary Johnston
Revelstoke, BC
You know you're a well-trained rural doc while visiting a city hospital when:
- You take off your rubber boots at the front door and put on clean "indoor" shoes, to the annoyance of people trying to get in and out.
- You find yourself wiping the floor after you spill a drop of coffee while walking down a hallway.
- You neatly carry your utensils to the counter in the restaurant and the waitress looks worried about it.
- Most everybody else is wearing a tie.
- You say "hi" to everyone then get the sense they wonder if you have privileges to be off the "psych" ward upstairs.
- You find yourself gawking up at the architecture beyond the second story, holding up the bustle on the sidewalk.
Jim Thompson
Sundre, Alta.
