Everyone Has a Bad Doctor Story

Come Laugh at One While Supporting Nurses

By: Dr. Denise Koh

Everyone has a bad doctor story. I certainly do, and I am a doctor. I have bad doctor stories as a patient trying to be heard, as a medical trainee being “pimped” by attending physicians who seemed to believe public humiliation was a teaching method, and as an attending physician dealing with colleagues who proved that a medical degree is not necessarily a personality transplant. I have also been the doctor in someone else’s bad story. That is the humbling part of medicine: sometimes you are the expert, sometimes you are the patient, and sometimes you are the reason a nurse is muttering under her breath at the medication cart.

On Monday, September 21, Winnipeg can come laugh at an actual doctor while helping raise money for nurses. “Shift Happens: Comedy for a Cause” is being driven by Tina Bitangcol, better known to her enormous online audience as Mama Nurse Tina. Tina has brought together comedy, healthcare and advocacy for a fundraiser supporting the Canadian Nurses Foundation. She is also headlining the show, because apparently organizing the entire thing was not enough work.

The evening will be hosted by Amie Archibald-Varley of The Gritty Nurse Podcast, with Richie Troccoli featured and yours truly, Doctora Den-Den, appearing as the special guest opener. I have not actually met any of these women yet. I have just been admiring them from a safe distance on the internet, as one does with BFDs: Big Freaking Deals. That may not be exactly what the “F” stands for backstage.

I may be a physician, but supporting nurses, and women throughout medicine and healthcare, is deeply personal to me. During my training, my research examined the experiences of Filipino nurses and vulnerable care workers. Over the years, my advocacy expanded more broadly to advancing and supporting women in medicine and healthcare across Manitoba and Canada. That work has taught me that being women in healthcare does not automatically make us allies, but it gives us every reason to become them.

I have also seen how nurses carry patients, families and entire healthcare systems through their most difficult moments, often without receiving the recognition or support they deserve. Nurses have been my colleagues, teachers, collaborators, advocates, truth-tellers and, occasionally, the people who stopped doctors from doing something stupid. Doctors may write the orders, but nurses know whether those orders will survive contact with reality.

The relationship between doctors and nurses can be complicated. Healthcare hierarchies are shaped by gender, professional power and generations of tradition. Women physicians and nurses have not always been encouraged to recognize one another as natural allies. Sometimes there is tension. Sometimes there is conflict. Sometimes a nurse challenges a doctor’s plan because she knows the patient, knows the ward and knows that the plan will never work. And sometimes the doctor needs to be properly put in her place.

Comedy lets us talk about those dynamics, release some pressure and laugh together at the absurdity of a healthcare system that too often expects its workers to keep functioning no matter what happens around them. Healthcare workers have endured extraordinary stress, burnout, loss and moral distress. One comedy show cannot repair the healthcare system, but it can give people a room in which to breathe, laugh and feel appreciated.

I’m coming into the show with a little momentum of my own. After winning my semifinal round, I’m heading to the finals of Winnipeg’s Funniest Person with a Day Job at Rumor’s Comedy Club on September 30. Apparently, being a doctor prepares you for stand-up comedy: strange hours, hostile audiences and people taking their pants off without warning.

But Monday night belongs to nurses. Come celebrate the people who keep healthcare moving, support a worthwhile cause and watch a physician attempt to impress a lineup of powerhouse women she has never met before. I’m bringing my best material, and donuts. I know how this hierarchy works.

“Shift Happens: Comedy for a Cause” takes place Monday, September 21, at The Rec Room Winnipeg. Doors open at 8:15 p.m. and the show begins at 8:45 p.m. Tickets are $25, with proceeds supporting the Canadian Nurses Foundation. Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/shift-happens-comedy-for-a-cause-tickets-1997495102623