Marlot Kuiper

163 Fainting and/or eating have fainted while giving a lecture Public Management at my own department, students and colleagues would have been shocked and worried. That day when I was observing – and subsequently fainting - when the anaesthesiologist in training gave the patient an epidural at the holding (nothing exciting really; no blood, no nothing) I noticed that I was starting to get familiar with the jargon and ‘appropriate behaviour’ in the surgery department. When she asked me: “Did you have a vagal nerve fainting episode?” (“Werd je vagaal?” in Dutch) I immediately got that she asked me if I had blacked out, and I wasn’t surprised by the reactions anymore. ‘Language’ played an important role in the fieldwork. Naturally, there was plenty of medical jargon I had to get acquainted with. Luckily, I was already a bit familiar with some of the Latin words (epidural, caesarean section, everything ending on ‘itis’ means infection, ‘ectomy’ means cutting out) because of my personal background with family members working as a doctor. Still, at first I was surprised when I was in the operating theatre and when the operation was almost finished, the scrub nurse asked if he could already “order the next patient”. As if they were ordering a product on Amazon.com. Later on, I did get why sometimes very ‘corporate like’ terminology was used when talking about patients. In order to deliver best care to your patient, you also need to be able to keep your distance. To some extent, patients are indeed ‘things’ – especially when they are covered by surgical drapes – that require an intervention. I had to learn these phrasings, the appropriate behaviours and what was expected from me, sometimes the hard way. Something I also had to learn, is how to deal with ‘food’ when observing surgical work. As said, that day in at the Children’s hospital, at the beginning of the fieldwork, I almost fainted when I just had a tiny breakfast. I learned that although having a decent breakfast (and lunch!) is crucial, taking care of yourself is not something that is ‘routine’ in this professional domain. Usually, doctors take better care for their patients than of themselves. This ‘culture’ of ‘not having food’ became overtly clear to me when once a scrub said to me: “Did you already have lunch dear? You better take care of yourself, cause no one else will.” During the observations, it occurred to me several times how “eating” appears as a ‘necessary evil’ – it simply takes time to eat. When I was shadowing vascular surgery, one of the surgeons in training left the theatre when anaesthesia was going to pick up the next patient at 11.15am; “I’ll