Abstract
I slipped and fell on black ice outside my apartment, Monday, January 25, breaking my tibia and fibula.
The moment I hit the pavement, I knew instinctively that my right leg was broken. I could hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of breaking bone. My limb immediately swelled up, and my right foot suddenly was at a 45° angle to my leg.
Fortunately, at the time of writing, I am on the road to recovery, thanks to an excellent surgeon, great nursing and rehab care, and well-trained physical therapists.
When the surgeon reviewed X rays of the injury, he told me, “You’ve got a severe break, a spiral fracture.” I asked him if he could take care of it, and he said, “Yes; I’m sure we can.”
He epitomized coolness and confidence. Even though our meeting was brief, I, in turn, felt confident that he knew what he was about to do.
The morning after the surgery, he showed up. “Did everything go OK?” I asked. “Well, we’ve got your toes pointing in the right direction,” he replied. “Yes; It did.”
If there was a lesson in this, it was that confidence and calmness are assuring to a patient—just as a professor’s confidence and calmness are to a student.
And there were other lessons from the hospital and rehab:
Teamwork makes everything possible. Surgeons, doctors, nurses, care attendants must work together in the interest of the patient. If someone on the team doesn’t pull her/his weight, then the patient’s healing will be jeopardized. So, too, must administrators, faculty, and staff work in the interest of the student. It is only through teamwork that results are achieved. Even when a student wins a competition in a certain discipline, that student is the product of every faculty and staff member on board—not just of one instructor.
People have to respect and support each other, regardless of race, ethnicity, and other variables. The rehab center where I stayed was a mini-United Nations with care givers from Iraq, Syria, Togo, among other countries. They got along; they worked well together.
People work hard in hospitals and rehab centers. They do not have time to stand around and gossip or be subversive.
Patients know who is the most competent, the most gentle, the most passionate about their work and about the patients. And word gets around. So, too, students know which professors care about their success and who is indifferent, burned out or the source of an easy A.
Hospital and rehab staffs are professional; they demonstrate professional behaviors and they are altruistic; faculty should be, too.
The most demanding physical therapist is most likely the person who most progresses the patient’s healing. The easygoing therapist may be nice but probably is not helping with healing—the goal of therapy. Likewise, the less demanding the professor, the less likely students are to be challenged and to learn.
Attention to detail is of utmost importance in hospitals and rehab centers. Nurses need to administer the correct medications; they need to administer the right amount of Vitamin D to Calcium; they need to provide the appropriate compression stockings—not a knee-high if a thigh-high is needed. If something is wrong, the implications may be significant, even fatal, for the patient. Faculty, too, need to attend to detail, especially in reviewing the work of students and the portfolios of fellow faculty at times of recruitment and hiring, reappointment, promotion, and tenure. Mistakes made by faculty, while not likely to be fatal, can be very serious and detrimental.
Good humor goes a long way. Even in the most stressful of situations, a sense of humor is valuable—in hospitals, in universities, and in life.
Waiting for the ambulance to arrive on January 25, I saw the irony in my situation: I slipped and fell on a rare morning of black ice in Lincoln, Nebraska. I had lived in ice and snow for almost 5 months a year for 12-plus years in Michigan and never sustained a fracture!
Such is life.
Passages
This edition of J&MCE excludes Passages. Obituaries for Dr. Sue Lafky, Dr. Deborah Gay Wakefield, and Dr. Joye Gordon, who have died since December 2015, will appear in the next edition of the journal.