What Happens When A Surgeon Get Pulled Over While Speeding To The Hospital For Emergency Procedures?

What happens when a surgeon/anesthesiologist/ operating room staff get pulled over while speeding to the hospital for emergency procedures?



This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Glenn Herman, 45 years a physician, a reader for longer

One of the funnier experiences in my whole career came at at 12:30 one night.

There was a patient who needed to have a Cesarean section and the residents called in their chief resident. (You will see the relevance of the next statement in just a minute.) The chief resident was a very “cute” 35 year old woman. She could have easily passed for a teenager.

Her arrival was very delayed, and I was going to do the surgery in her absence. While I was at the scrub sink the chief resident suddenly arrived, grabbed a scrub brush, angrily opened the package, and began a very exaggerated surgical scrub.

“Dr. Herman, Dr. Herman, you have to help me!”

I looked at her, and now she was crying. I asked what happened.

She had been stopped for speeding, and the police officer started off with the classical line: “What’s the rush?”

She explained that she was the chief resident in Obstetrics and added: “I need to get to the hospital to do an urgent operation.”

The policeman listened to her, looked her straight in the eye, and said: “Yes, and I am the man in the moon.”

The cop took her license and told her to return with a supervising physician to back up what she said.

She was rightfully upset, but I had a lot of sympathy for the cop.

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