Doctor reveals the unsavory jokes and abuses surgeons carried while operating on vulnerable patients

  • The anonymous essay was inspired by a discussion the doctor had with medical students in January 
  • One student discussed a time a resident surgeon said 'I bet she's enjoying this' while prepping an anesthetized patient's vagina
  • The writer also recalled a time he helped deliver a Mexican woman's baby
  • She was bleeding profusely and the resident doctor saved her life
  • But then, with his entire hand still in her vagina, he began to sing La Cucaracha and dance as she lay there anesthetized 

An anonymous essay has revealed a dark side to the operating room, with two particularly lurid stories of doctors acting inappropriately while their patients were under the knife. 

The essay, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is titled 'Our Family Secrets' and begins with the writer facilitating a discussion with eight medical students on the topic of forgiveness.

'Do any of you have someone to forgive from your clinical experience?' he asked when their conversation waned. 'Did anything ever happen that you...perhaps still can't forgive?' 

That's when his student David spoke up and said, 'something unforgivable happened to me'. 

An anonymous essay published in the Annals of Internal Medicine has revealed a dark side to the operating room, with two stories of doctors acting inappropriately while their patients were under the knife (file photo)

An anonymous essay published in the Annals of Internal Medicine has revealed a dark side to the operating room, with two stories of doctors acting inappropriately while their patients were under the knife (file photo)

The fourth-year student explained to the writer that it happend while he was scrubbed into a hysterectomy and the attending doctor who prepping the anesthetized patient's vagina. 

'I bet she's enjoying this,' the doctor said said to the student as he cleansed and scrubbed inside the woman, even winking at David before he laughed. 

David told his teacher that the incident still made him angry. 

'I was just standing there trying to learn. The guy was a dirtball,' he said. 

David's experience inspired the writer to share an unforgivable experience he had personally had in his third year of medical school, after he helped deliver a baby for a Mexican woman.

The woman was bleeding profusely and dangerously after the delivery, but was saved by the writer's resident doctor - temporarily leaving him in awe. 

But that didn't last long. The doctor, his 'whole hand still inside' the woman's vagina, began to dance and sing 'La Cucaracha'. 

'He stomps his feet, twists his body, and waves his right arm above his head. All the while, he holds here...He starts laughing. He keeps dancing,' the author writes. 

'And then he looks at me. I begin to sway to his beat. I hum and laugh along with him. Moments later, the anesthesiologist yells, "Knock it off, a*******!" And we stop'. 

The writer said after he recounted the story his students were silent. 

One story, told to the writer by a medical school student, recalled a resident surgeon who, while prepping an anesthetized woman's vagina for a hysterectomy said, 'I bet she's enjoying this' and winked 

One story, told to the writer by a medical school student, recalled a resident surgeon who, while prepping an anesthetized woman's vagina for a hysterectomy said, 'I bet she's enjoying this' and winked 

'I know,' he concludes in his essay, 'this is my silence to break'. 

It was a sentiment that the journal's editor-in-chief, Dr. Christine Laine, agreed with. 

'We all agreed that the piece was disgusting and scandalous and could damage the profession's reputation,' she said in an essay for the issue called 'Shining a Light on the Dark Side'.

'Some believed this was reason not to publish the story. Others believed that it was precisely why we should publish it.' 

Laine said the journal hoped that by bringing the horrors of the piece to light, which she notes reeked of 'misogyny, disrespect' and, in the case of the second incident, 'heavy overtones of sexual assault and racism', it could emphasize how unacceptable such behavior was. 

'We should not only refrain from personally acting in such a manner,' she writes, 'but also call out our colleagues who do.' 

'If the essay gives just one physician the courage to act like the anesthesiologist in this story, then it will be well worth publishing'. 

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