CASE

“The chief resident ‘lied’”

In rounds I began to notice that the chief resident occasionally misstated information in order to avoid criticism from the attending. On one occasion I believed patient care and safety were possibly jeopardized when the chief resident “lied” by saying he was unaware of a serious abnormality, even though I knew personally that he had had the knowledge for more than 6 hours. Should I have corrected my superior in rounds? Talked to my superior separately? Talked to other staff? Let it go?

CASE

“A false report”

It was in the morning and my good friend and I were in our third-year clerkship. He very much wanted an honors grade in surgery. He had been busy xeroxing articles related to his preceptor's research project so, as he explained to me, he had not yet checked on his patients. The chief resident arrived and asked my friend if a patient whose temperature had spiked the previous evening was still febrile.

He responded, “No, 99.2.” – a false report and I knew it.

COMMENTARY

“The chief resident ‘lied’”

When I was a medical student, a resident achieved a much-admired reputation for one-upmanship. He simply carried a test tube of blood around in the breast pocket of his white jacket. The hospital was world-renowned for research that made nearly every issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.