A Tribute to a Wonderful Obstetrican

We could always tell he coming down the hall as the whistling of some Jimmy Buffet tune would precede him by several seconds. Whistling was such a hallmark of his, and such a habit of mine, that often I would turn a corner and find the nurses had been expecting to see him instead of me.

He was of the "old school." He believed in assessing the patient with your hands, your eyes, your ears. . .not with machines. More than once he would ask a new nurse how strong the patient's contractions were and when she pointed to the fetal monitor, he would shake his head, take her hand and place in on the uterine fundus. "Here is how you tell how strong the contractions are!"

The machine he disliked the most was the computer. He felt it had no place in the labor room, in the operating room, well, let's face it, I don't think he thought it belonged in the hospital at all! While he eventually acquiesced to using them, he always maintained computers didn't make everything quicker and easier for everyone, some people just seemed to be faster with pen and paper. He was one of them.

His patients, without fail, loved him. He had a way of caring for them that like a kindly uncle or a substitute father. He cared about the patients and their families. He wanted to know who everyone was in the room.

That isn't to say he didn't "tell it like it was." He did. to everyone: patients, family members, nurses, administrators, anyone within earshot. You never knew what story, what description, what exclamation was going to come out of his mouth. But somehow you knew, even if he was passionately complaining about something, that the source of it underneath was a genuine caring.

I saw that caring time and time again, not just to patients, but to our nurses. He would put a fatherly hand on the shoulder of a nurse on orientation and ask her how she was doing, and it was obvious he was truly concerned. Nurses who might be out sick for a while would find him asking if they were "doing ok now?" when they returned. He cared for us when we were sick and he cared for us when we were sad, when others might have just walked on by.

He was the very best, the very best, at watching a questionable fetal heart rate tracing. He was never quick to jump in to operate. He would sit at the patient's beside (which was reassuring to both the patient and the nurse) and watch that heart rate. He would sit and watch and wait and watch and wait. He would explain to everyone in the room how the baby's heart rate resolve if we would give it some time. Never, never did I see him be wrong.

He was a unique physician, a unique man, and it will be so difficult to be at work and not hear that whistling down the halls. We will miss that heart of song and smile of joy. . .

Benjamin Robert Busbee, MD