Nuns and Nurses

There were two private hospitals that Black doctors could put patients in St. Louis, Peoples Hospital and St. Mary’s Infirmary.
St. Mary’s was the one that our staff rotated us through so they would have 24/7 coverage, since private patients could not be admitted to the “G’s”.
The best thing about going to St. Mary’s was it wasn’t that busy and they had great food plus the attending let you do a lot of surgery on their patients. Some were not up on the latest techniques and allowed the resident to sort of teach them!
Many a situation occurred at this hospital, especially since Nuns were in charge, and were scrutinizing everything.
One time a physician admitted a patient for a D&C with the diagnosis of incomplete abortion, the truth being she was really still pregnant and the nurse was looking over his shoulder when he aborted the fetus. She shouted “ what have you done? “ and he bolted out of the OR with the fetus wrapped in a towel and flushed it down the toilet. The nurse ran to get the nun who called up the plumber to check the toilet and drains so she could have a priest baptize the fetus. By the time he got the toilet removed the fetus was probably on it’s way to the Mississippi river.
Another time I was operating with a well respected old surgeon who never ever did total hysterectomies. He was fast because it was his technique to do partial hysterectomies. Since it was the current standard of care to do the longer more complex operation I asked him why he didn’t do it. He said, “ My operation takes less than an hour, but I’ll give you another hour to do your operation. If you can’t get it done in that time, no more suggestions from you!
Dr Smiley would have been proud of me because I was just a 2nd year resident and I whipped the rest of that uterus out in under the hour. After that he let me do all his hysterectomies while I was on that 3 month rotation.
Another perk was that most of the attending had offices in East St. Louis which was right across the river from the hospital, but few made it to their deliveries because they all had huge general practices. So we residents delivered most of their patients and did the circumcisions though the patients never knew since most were put to sleep in those days. The good part for us beside the experience was there would be an envelope with some cash in your mail box the next day and we all needed that extra money.
One of the things I did that annoyed the nurses was that I wore my keys on a chain around my neck and at night I would make rounds and the keys would jingle and I sometimes caught the nurses goofing off or smoking on the unit, thinking I was a nun, because their rosaries made a similar sound. When I appeared they would say “ oh shit, Robbie, we thought you were sister”. One thing that won them over was I always came when they called me and that bond took me a long way with them. Many a complication was diagnosed or avoided by them giving me a heads up.
One time I was assigned to scrub with one of the long time revered surgeons Dr T and the next day I made post op rounds on all his patients as was my habit at 6 am. I had inspected their wounds and put on a fresh dressings. When he came in to round I proudly exclaimed to him what I had done and he looked at me with displeasure. He was a real bullshitter with patients and after telling them in detail how difficult or complex their surgery was he left them all smiles. Once out in the hall he said “ Robinson don’t you ever touch a patient of mine post op, they can’t see what I did inside them but they can see the beautiful bandage I put on them”
I learned a lesson and swore that I would never follow another fucking patient of his post op.
Maybe because of my relationship with the nurses and willingness to work hard several of the attending asked me to moonlight in their offices. These jobs were passed down to a select few since it had to be on the hush because it was forbidden by the Dr Monat.
The moonlight jobs were usually done as 3rd year and chief when we were off but occasionally we would do it on call while one of our fellow junior residents covered the service in house.
Remember this was long before pagers or cell phones and our connection to the hospital was the switchboard operators (ala Ernestine) who if they liked you could do wonders patching calls.
So I could be in an office in East St. Louis moonlighting and staff a case with Monat or other staff who thought I was at the “G’s” on the phone and if on a rare occasion I had to be there my resident could hold the fort until I got there. This protocol was tried and true and passed down year after year and had even been initiated on many occasions for personal use. ( i.e. wives and girl friends).
Another important perk at St. Mary’s Infirmary was the nuns served great food especially compared to the “G”s”.