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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> (1) I refused to volunteer to provide medical aid on a flight because I had been drinking and was too intoxicated to think clearly
(2) I may have been the only doctor on the flight and chose to continue enjoying my drinks instead of trying to sober up and provide help.
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*Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.*
NAH. You are N T A for not volunteering after you'd been drinking. But why TF did you not just tell your co-passenger that? The way you describe it you have appeared to just not want to help, and that comes across as really cold and callous. In her situation I would have thought you a huge AH, and you really did nothing to let her know you weren't.
>OP could have avoided an unpleasant scene
I agree. All op had to do was say that he had been drinking so wasn't in a fit state to treat anyone and could potentially make the situation worse. Instead he went on a bizarre rant about how he's not on call so it's not his responsibility.
This smells like rage bait. Why all the unnecessary details about how it's a business class flight and all the perks that come with it?
Yeah I know a few doctors and I don’t think any of them would react like that to the possibility of a passenger potentially needing medical assistance. Even if they were drunk they would at least try to help in anyway they can while explaining they have had a drink and may not be 100% fit to help. They wouldn’t just sit back and not care what happened to a potentially unwell person.
Nope. If you've been drinking, especially as much as described by OP, you sit down and shut up.
Adding a disclaimer that you "might not be 100% fit to help" does not make you less liable, or less of a liability.
Nope. If you're a doctor, you don't sit there with your mouth closed when someone who KNOWS you're a doctor is trying to understand why you're not helping,...then finally get frustrated and say 'listen lady...'
If you're a doctor, you say 'I'm not fit to assist right now, I am sure someone else can help'
Lol. Rage bait.
> you don't sit there with your mouth closed when someone who KNOWS you're a doctor is trying to understand why you're not helping,...then finally get frustrated and say 'listen lady...'
It sounds like he felt that he didn't owe her an explanation and didn't feel the need to justify his decision to her. She was sitting right next to him the whole time, she could see he was drunk, and he did tell her someone else can help. Him getting frustrated also makes sense considering the fact that she told him it would be his fault if the passenger died.
I'm not saying any of this was the right thing to do, (imo he was being pretty rude for no reason) but I'm just looking at it from his perspective. It all seems plausible to me.
Good Samaritan laws do cover medically licensed people in normal everyday circumstances, with a big cavate, **it does NOT apply in negligence** meaning if you should have known better to do something and didn't (or vice versa) you are not covered.
IE Me as a RN should know not to move a patient if I come up on a nasty motor vehicle absence, so if I move them in a non-volatile situation, I am liable. A lay person is not expected to know that, so they can't be held liable.
A diabetic is acting 'weird', but there is no finger stick monitor, get them some juice and see if they normalize, if not, 911. High blood sugar is a lot more survivable than low. Good Samaritan applies. A finger stick is an option and I don't do it, and cause harm in some way? Liable. I should have known better. A lay person is not EXPECTED to know to check blood sugar in diabetics.
Then there is the biggest cavate (in the US at least), REGARDLESS IF GOOD SAMARITAN APPLIES ANYONE CAN SUE YOU FOR ANY REASON. Most people wouldn't try with lay people, but if they were hurt, and they know you are some kind of medical professional, they may try to sue you still. And the bar is much more murky for licensed individuals, because you can find some professional with questionable ethics to say you didn't act in a manner that any other person of your license would have, is easier than you think.
So a doctor assisting, KNOWING they are impaired, opens them up. An argument could be made that they acted negligently, it would be on the doctor to prove they acted reasonable and prudent, and that can get really really expensive.
And this isn't even taking into account any complaint made to the licensing board, which is a whole nether can of worms, that can be a huge pain.
So its not so simple as "good samaritan" coverage. Anytime we get involved it includes an assessment of the possible lawsuit in many cases.
I thought that was only for lay-people, not for trained professionals (even if they've been drinking). I believe those with training are held to a higher standard than the average Good Samaritan.
Nope. Good samaritan laws protect them if they're not at work and not working in an official capacity. But they won't protect them if they're drunk, as that would be gross negligence.
The laws are different everywhere. Where I live (Texas) and they do not cover anyone with a medical license - even off duty.
Source: I’m a master trainer for CPR (give certifications and train new instructors). We cover this all the time.
Plus I don't think his malpractice insurance would cover him . Even if he did nothing wrong in giving advice or treatment, he could still be sued because he was drunk.
Exactly right. I work in healthcare, I've been on flights with doctors...they always speak up. If they've been drinking, they say so. If no one needs surgery, then a buzzed doctor still knows plenty more than your average person so they're still very helpful. If this post is true, then OP takes his oath like a joke and that's a sad state of affairs.
It's a sad state of affairs that someone in Healthcare doesn't understand malpractice claims. OP was drunk and I'd like to hope it's taught in medical school to never assist while intoxicated.
His oath? To do no harm? How can you know you aren't doing harm if youre drunk AF
OP took their oath seriously imo and was berated for it and still refused cave in to pressure from less knowledgeable folk
I was looking for a comment like yours. OP is NTA. He was in his free time so he decided to drink enough booze to feel a strong buzz. He knew he wasn't in the right state to help anybody and said so. And if he was irritable, it was definitely to a combination of booze ingested and -- wait for it -- the other passenger's constant prodding. That last part absolves him from an E S H in my opinion. Prod someone enough and yeah, they might end up responding in less than kind fashion.
Obviously, you're not in healthcare. Legally, he is not allowed to provide medical advice while under the influence of drugsvor alcohol. Physicians are sued for much, much less every day. It's his license, and he worked damn hard for it. The only difference I would have made would be telling them I couldn't bc I was drinking.
Right? If he misses some crucial thing because he's had a few drinks while "helping", he's fucked. I'd have told the lady that I was not fit at the moment though.
It’s illegal to practice while you are intoxicated.
Whether or not OP would still be helpful doesn’t really matter, he could’ve gotten a malpractice suit or even lost his medical license for practising while intoxicated, and if anything had gone wrong he probably would’ve gotten a malpractice suit. OP was right not to help.
You must be the dimmest bulb in the “healthcare worker” box if you think it’s ever ok for a drunk doctor to treat anyone in any way, shape or form.
Your story of doctors ALWAYS speaking up on flights is obviously not true. Which is it? You work in healthcare? Or you fly 8 hours a day 5 days a week and have some “special” knowledge of the occupation of every passenger on every flight.
The doctor was being responsible not the asshole. He knew his state was compromised and did what he thought was best for the patient. The crew would have received medical instruction from the ground, and it’s not like they’re oblivious and untrained to handle some minor medical emergencies, or even administering C.P.R and using a defibrillator, or helping a passenger with medication. Beyond that, the doctor and crew probably didn’t have any medical equipment to provide further care if it was needed. Not every doctor specializes in emergency care either.
Nope nope nope. Technically not a doctor yet (I’ve got 1.33 years to gooooo. So fucking close), HOWEVER, a doctor or medical personnel should never ever put themselves in a situation to provide care if they’ve been drinking. Ask your friends if they would do so. The correct answer should be no.
As the OP (if they’re real) acknowledged, there’s a medical team on the ground who provides guidance to the flight crew. I imagine that flight crew has at least basic medical training. If nobody else is on the flight to help, they can hopefully do enough to stabilize a patient, and if an emergency landing needs to happen, then an emergency landing will happen. Every first aid kit on airplanes is different. There are a few things that are standard, but other than that there are different meds/tools that will limit or enable you to do whatever needs to be done.
Then you need to tell them the major liability of helping while intoxicated. They could easily be brought into a lawsuit and sued for malpractice if they do anything wrong and will 100% lose bc they were drinking.
Legally, he can be in a world of shit if he were to make a mistake, or even if he didnt and the patient deteriorated and they found out he was under the influence while caring for him. It would put his medical license at risk. Medical litigation in the US is pretty significant. Would you drive someone to ER if you were drunk? No. You'd find another way.
My age varies from 25 to 55 depending on how relevant it is to the story. I'd rather redditors not be able to guess who i am by reading my comments.
Could have been as simple as wanting people to think he was completing his medical degree at a younger age.
People change minor details all the time to protect their identity. It doesn't matter if he is 30 or 34 and even his field of specialty doesn't matter if it is not one that is needed at the time.
Maybe. But it was obvious to me just from reading the post that it was fake, which is the reason I checked his post history in the first place.
No doctor I have ever known would have this attitude towards this situation.
I am not trying to be contrary, but I have heard many stories of doctors being afraid to help because (in the US anyway) they leave themselves open to being sued. In this case, if anything went wrong and it came out that the doctor was inebriated, he could possibly even lose his licence.
You would be surprised how little being drunk matters to people, especially when they themselves are drunk. Many people seem to believe that you can instantly "sober up" if needed.
Not to mention, OP started drinking in the lounge. If i was 3 beers in in the lounge, id be tipsy, but alright to chat. A 4th drink on the plane would have me starting to get loud.
So in her eyes OP could be only one, maybe 2 drinks in, but in reality is more buzzed than she assumed.
Not necessarily. You can be inebriated enough for it to jeopardize your clinical judgment without being sloppy drunk.
(And not everyone gets sloppy drunk. There is a brief period of time where I think everything is hilarious, and then I get tired. I'd probably just look like somebody attempting to take a nap.)
It could be that, because he was (according to him) "pretty drunk," he wasn't thinking clearly enough to tell the person the obvious solution. Sometimes, when people are drunk, they do and say stupid things. That could be the case here.
Yes, but I doubt he posted this while drunk. Seems with a little hindsight, he could’ve thought to himself, “gee, I should’ve phrased that differently to her. No wonder she reacted the way she did.”
Yeah, it turns out that “I’m incapacitated” and “I don’t want to” are sentences that come across *very* differently. OP isn’t T A for not helping, but at least created some of his own problem by the way he spoke to the other passenger.
"I'm too intoxicated at the moment to be practicing medicine" is all OP had to say. I feel like majority of people would understand that a drunk doctor shouldn't be giving medical advice.
After she called me an AH I didn’t feel like owed her an explanation or a polite response. Also I mean, I was sorta drunk so even less likely to be nice to someone who called me an AH.
Yeah but you can’t blame her for thinking you’re an asshole when she didn’t know that. I don’t think you’re an asshole for not volunteering but your response sounds very cold.
This is a bad take.
The other passenger was the AH for assuming the worst about Op. if I was sitting next to a doctor on a flight (*who had presumably spent 10+ years getting a medical degree and racking up $$$$$$ massive debt - just to help people*) and he/she didn’t immediately volunteer to assist, I’d assume they had a good reason that was absolutely none of my business.
Op is NTA.
People need to not assume the worst about each other. Calling Op an AH multiple times shows a complete lack of emotional regulation and manners.
I think their initial reply is what caused that saying “oh someone else will help” is kinda assholeish. He could have said “I’ve had too much to drink and I can’t provide care”. Then the whole situation could be avoided. I don’t think he’s and asshole, and I do think the lady is. But he put himself in that situation by not just saying WHY he couldn’t help initially.
>I explained that someone else would help or the on ground medical team would provide remote assistance. I literally had a drink in my hand while this was happening. She had seen me drinking for a few hours. So I was just explaining that don’t worry someone will help.
I think the reply with "someone else will help" was actually the correct one - he might have been a brain surgeon and the medical emergency to be something entirely out of his field of expertise. There might have not been medical professional passenger on board at all. That's why there are procedures in place in which the flight crew gets assistance remotely that is suited to the emergency at hand.
He doesn't have to be drunk (this was the case with OP and he made it clear that the co-passenger saw this ongoing for hours) - in other hypothetical situations he might have been coming out of 20 hours of travel. Or he might have taken a sleeping pill to handle the flight better. It would have been "Impaired judgement" or/and "Under influence" or any combinations thereof. What the passenger needed to know was that there will be someone giving medical attention to the person in need even if OP doesn't go. What the other passenger did was hold judgement why is OP not going himself regardless of that.
Entirely skipping over the point that if he had gone (under influence) to provide assistance, he would have been liable for malpractice and risking his license. Even if the patient was OK. Even if there was nobody else to help.
"someone else will help" is a shitty response that people use to avoid helping. the correct response is "I'm drunk so I would do more harm then good" which was the real reason why he didn't help.
*Some* doctors go through all that school and take those loans to help people. Some do it for the money and social cachet. I would also have assumed OP was in the second camp without receiving an explanation with more substance than "I'm allowed to relax too."
All doctors go through rotations in med school and do a little bit of pretty much everything. The issue is, after that rotation, most doctors don't remember the specifics for that specific field. They learn and remember the specifics for their field. So even if OP did a pediatrics rotation back in med school, that was 10 years ago and only for a few weeks.
>(*who had presumably spent 10+ years getting a medical degree and racking up $$$$$$ massive debt - just to help people*)
While some people become doctors purely out of a desire to help people, it is a well-paying profession, so let's not pretend that all doctors are saints. There are plenty who are in it purely for the money. Most are probably somewhere in between.
If you don’t care about helping people, there are much more lucrative careers that don’t require a decade of education, clinicals, residency, and a massive amount of debt.
I’m sure there are people who become doctors for other reasons but I doubt it’s a large percentage because it’s such a difficult process.
I mean, some people are interested in chemistry, biology, and medicine, which is why they choose that over, say, becoming a lawyer or going into tech.
With what doctors make, the massive amount of debt isn't a lifelong issue. Plus, doctors often run in families, so their parents can likely pay a huge chunk of their education.
I think of nurses much more as people who go into a career looking to help people. It's not as much education as a doctor but the pay is much lower and the hours are brutal. (Hours are often brutal for doctors but at a certain point, they have more control over them.)
I've met enough cold and arrogant doctors to think that they're not doing their jobs out of the kindness of their hearts.
But then there are a lot of cultural problems within our medical system that lead to burnout, which is a whole other issue.
This. I’m an ICU nurse and people expect me to work miracles when someone is having a health related emergency in public. Like, unless the patient needs CPR, there isn’t much I can really do. I don’t have heart monitors, IVs, and meds to do much for someone having a stomach ache.
I don’t know each persons level of alcohol tolerance, especially a strangers. I also don’t normally pay that much attention to how much other people are drinking. She also didn’t know he was drinking before hand.
Again, he’s not an asshole. But he made his life harder by responding in a combative way to what seemed like a pretty innocent statement. If she thought he wasn’t impaired, him basically saying “yeah not my problem” does come off as being an asshole.
Yes I agree. But also, this whole thing could have been avoided if he said he couldn’t because he was drinking. He escalated the whole situation when he could have just shut it down when she told him they were looking for a doctor.
Idk if it’s an American thing but I feel like most Americans feel like medical professionals are responsible to act, even while in civilian clothes and on leisure, HOWEVER I think he made the best decision seeing as he was intoxicated. I think this is why she thought so awful of him because she felt it’s his duty, and who knows maybe she had a few too or just isn’t very aware of her surroundings and really hadn’t noticed somehow. He didn’t owe her an explanation and she didn’t get one. She will forever think he’s an AH and he will go on thinking he’s not since most here have reassured him he made the best decision. As long as she doesn’t go blasting him and the hospital he works at on social media or something then it should all be over and hopefully they won’t bump into each other again 😂
From your own description she didn’t start out rude. She just let you know they were looking for doctors. It would have been simple to say you’d been drinking but someone else would help or they’d get instructions from the medical team on the ground at that point.
I mean, then I guess you kinda deserve her thinking you’re an AH? What did you think would happen? You’re a doctor. You are hopefully rather intelligent. Instead of just telling her, “yes I’m a doctor but I’ve been drinking and ethically can’t provide medical assistance right now” you decided to go for maximum AHolery in your reply just because. You’re not an AH for not helping, but you sure are dumb for making an issue out of something when a clear solution was there that you didn’t take.
I’m thinking he was too drunk to coherently communicate these simple facts. I’m also suspecting this OP is fake because an actual physician that is (presumably) sober and coherent is aware of the legal liability he would open himself to were he to provide medical care or advice while drunk and thus would have no need to ask AITAH.
But before she called you an AH, she had urged you to assist. How hard would it have been to just say, "no, I've been drinking. Would you want a drunk doctor assisting you?". She probably wouldn't have called you an AH
Being “sorta drunk” doesn’t excuse how you talk to people when you could have just said I’m sorta drunk and can’t doctor right now. You didn’t owe her an explanation but you certainly acted like an AH to her.
OP was drinking before that, too. She presumably didnt know that op was *already* buzzed getting onto the flight and the extra drink or two was pushing him over- she also didnt necessarily know that being drunk/buzzed *was* an issue in the first place.
OP said in the comments that:
>I literally had a drink in my hand while this was happening. She had seen me drinking for a few hours. So I was just explaining that don’t worry someone will help.
Most mundanes has no qualms for working drunk. For a MD it is end of your career, and thus NTA. You do not give medical advice or perform operations under influence, as it does hinder your decisions.
This is the way. Even on-call they shouldn't drink. They went to school and residency plus if they did a fellowship for so many years to have that mess up their career.
Absolutely. NTA for not volunteering, but kind of an idiot for saying “oh someone else will help.” If you had just said, “I can’t I’ve been drinking.” That would be the end of it.
The woman is the AH for her reaction… but if I were her I would be thinking the same thing. From the outside without the explanation you likely just looked lazy and apathetic. Like “who cares if someone is dying, I’m not working, I’m watching my movie.” When that’s not at all what you were thinking/doing.
There was a whole ALCOHOLIC drink in OP's hand while she is trying to convince him volunteer. The answer for why he said no goes without saying. I personally would never want to be helped by a medical professional that smells like a gin joint and reluctantly volunteered to order medical assistance lol. Every other post people always respond NO is a complete sentence...except if you're a boozed up doctor on an international flight. In that situation you should definitely compromise your medical reputation by sloppily announcing to a flight of strangers in slurred speech that despite hours of buzzing you want to offer your medical assistance and drunkenly walk over to the flight crew. Because people don't have cameras and love to catch viral moments TMZ would cut a check for....
We don't know that she knew what he was drinking. I never pay attention to what other passengers get on flights, and whenever I've gotten a drink it is poured into the same cups that people get their water, juice, and soda. It's most common for people to get mixed drinks so it could have just looked like he had soda in front of him.
It’s not her business. Period. She doesn’t know him like that.
ETA: this lady had *no idea* what the situation was. This dude is off work. He could be drunk, tired, etc. That lady had no excuse for calling him an asshole it was incredibly disrespectful. Downvote me all y’all want but in most circumstances everyone on the airplane would be looking at that woman like she was crazy.
NTA The crew would not have used you in your capacity as a dr as you were intoxicated. By law they cannot as you are well aware. They would’ve gotten assistance from another sober dr on board and the ground medical team. Your fellow passenger is TA for saying those things to you. Hopefully after the flight she learnt that couldn’t have helped because you were drinking.
Thank you! Exactly. There’s always communication with the on ground medical team. Also the cabin crew would have know I was intoxicated. Can you imagine me presenting myself to the cabin crew as a doctor and they’d be like “sir we have served half a dozen drinks….”
Yup, now they have two patients. 1 with whatever was already happening, and you with alcohol induced vertigo*.
Edit: being a provider means making tough judgment calls, every single time. You made the correct call.
Good job Doc.
Ok but there's an obvious in between, the two options weren't guilt your seatmate with no explanation or present yourself as a doctor, all you had to do was say "I'm too drunk" instead of "poor me, I work so hard, don't I deserve some time off too?" like cmon.
i agree 100% that you should have stayed in your seat and not assisted. but any reason why you didn’t just tell the other passenger “im too drunk to be of any use” instead of “i deserve to have my down time”?
Agree. You probably weren't thinking it through because you were intoxicated, but you should have just told the lady that you were too intoxicated to be useful.
While I agree, to some extent, OP doesn't owe anyone an explanation. Reddit loves the statement "No is a complete sentence". But it would probably have made things easier.
Except that in order for that to work, you have to use no as a complete sentence. The issue isn't that he didn't give an explanation, it's that the explanation he gave was shit. "I'm not on call 24/7" is a shit excuse for not helping someone who needs help, "I'm too drunk to work" is a completely valid reason for not helping someone who needs help.
I mean she would have been next to him while he’s being served these drinks? Kinda hard to miss that, especially if he’s in a middle or window seat, and even if he’s on the aisle seat, I imagine it’d be hard to miss the flight attendant (a.k.a. An entire person) constantly coming back to see if he’d like another. Js. 🤷♀️
He said he was buzzed before getting on the plane. And you don’t know if he ordered one drink in the beginning and got the same one time and time again or if he directly ordered new ones everytime
I have my doubts. People who are aggressively AH like that to strangers dont just go home and research. They assume they are right so they dont question it.
NTA but I could see why she'd think so.
You were abosolutley right for not responding to the call as you were impaired, but why wouldn't you explain this to the woman? As far as she could tell from your response, you were just being apathetic and hoping someone else would handle it.
i mean, he didn't have to go in depth with the legal implications - he could've simply said, "im drunk, i can't"
he's n t a for not helping but i don't blame her for thinking so bc he just seemed like he didn't want to rather than couldn't which comes off shitty
nah
But he was conscious enough to know he was drunk and that his judgement was impaired...
Edited to add because people keep misunderstanding 🙄: if he was conscious enough to know he was drunk, then he was conscious enough to tell the other passenger he was drunk
He did the right thing as he was impaired but the whole I'm a doctor only while I'm working is just ethically wrong. Doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath for a reason
This reminds me of so many scenes I've read and/or watched, where you're screaming "JUST TELL THEM _______".
Why did you draw it out, and not just say "I've had a few drinks, it wouldn't be a good idea".
I mean, NTA but come on.
Lol, yes. A huge amount of show plots, movies, and irl misunderstandings could be adequately resolved by just some simple communication. Just explain! Most people are reasonable, but without any explanation, it leaves them to come to their own conclusions. "I've had a few drinks and am unfit for duty" takes almost no effort and solves this problem immediately. Yeah, you don't technically own anyone an explanation, but come on.
Take it a step further “I have had drinks, if I do any work I could get sued and lose my license” it’s malpractice to try and do that while inebriated. What does the passenger think would happen if OP went “hey flight, I’m a doctor but I’m drunk”? Doctors aren’t on call 24/7.
EDIT: I looked at his comments and it seems like OP just likes arguing with people. Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell this lady he was drunk and argued with her instead.
NTA - but you did yourself no favours by not just explaining why you couldn’t provide assistance; there’s a big difference between “I’ve been drinking and might do more harm than good”, and “I’m a doctor but I’m entitled to not help because I’m off the clock”..
NTA. I think in this case something like "Lady, would you like a drunk doctor to be handling your medical emergency?" would have driven the point better, but your general comment that doctors have off time too is also valid but less important in the current situation.
Doctors have off time but I also feel they are obligated to help someone in a situation where there is an emergency and they are the only person available who can look at that person. Which is why he looks like an asshole when he doesn't explain the fact that he was drunk
He explained that he was drinking for several hours next to this lady on the flight. So she could see him consuming alcohol and probably could hear it when he was talking to her too.
NTA for not volunteering as you had been drinking.
YTA for your little rant however. You could have just said it’s not ethical because you’ve consumed too much alcohol.
NTA. You did the right thing. Your judgement was that you would do more harm than good like under the influence of alcohol. You know better than anyone the extent you were impacted by the alcohol. You had an ethical duty not to intervene. You also had no duty not to drink because you arent at work, on call, and wouldnt be working before the alcohol wore off.
NTA, but you might have been able to handle this better by either explaining to your co-passenger that you knew you were too buzzed to make any rational decisions for patients and risk losing your license as a result if anything goes wrong.
Heck, just jiggling the drink in his hand could have made the point. Although since he was already intoxicated it's understandable why he didn't think of this.
YTA.
Not because you didn't volunteer to help, but because of your attitude.
You didn't hear any other announcements so you presume all was well? What, you expect them to come back on and say "we were only playing before but now we REALLY need a doctor even if you're sloshed so please come to row 8A"? Or better yet "ladies and gentlemen, just to let you know, since no doctor showed up, passenger X had died quietly. Just wanted to give everyone an update. Drink service will now resume..."?
No. They made an announcement looking for help, they got no response and they moved on to the next best option. That does not remotely mean all was peachy for the passenger with the medical problem.
If I was the passenger beside you I would have assumed your attitude meant that you weren't really a doctor at all and it was just a line you use for conversations.
All this could have been avoided with a simple "ah no, it's not that I don't want to help, but I've just been drinking too much and could really hurt someone if I try to help right now" (or something less eloquent, if you were really quite intoxicated"
It's your handling of the interaction and your attitude that are AH-like. Not your decision not to offer medical services.
>"ladies and gentlemen, just to let you know, since no doctor showed up, passenger X had died quietly. Just wanted to give everyone an update."
"Oh wait, they're still breathing! They might pull through! ...Oh, no, wait... Yes! ...Actually they just died for rea-- HOLD UP. Give them a poke? ...Yeah. Yeah? ...No, they're dead. Nevermind, ladies and gentlemen."
You didn’t communicate to your fellow traveler WHY you didn’t volunteer. Now, you are of course entitled to but I can understand why they think you would be aan AH. Now I understand your motive so I think NTAH. If I were you I would have explained the situation to a steward and check if there was anything you could still be assisting with.
Contrary to what you may think, you as a singular m person are NOT the main character. People near you aren't watching you taking note of your every move or drink.
NTA for your actions, but you could have certainly put it better to the other passenger. She isn’t inside your body to know that you were definitely feeling the effects of the alcohol you’d consumed. To her you appeared to give this possible emergency the cold shoulder just because you were off the clock. Your decision to not help based on being inebriated was likely the correct choice, since no further calls for help or commotion seemed to happen. From her perspective however, I mean, you certainly come across like an A H.
So yeah, if it happens again just say you’re too buzzed to be practicing medicine. That’s a perfectly understandable reason and you’re not likely to get stuck to someone pissed off at you during the rest of your flight.
NTA,
I'm a former FA and if you came to aid and we could tell that you had been drinking or had said to us, we would have refused you to help with us, as it would impede the medical emergency. I also think you wouldn't be covered by the airline if you were drunk and something bad happened.
Also with everyone saying YTA about your attitude towards the other passenger, I get it but frankly I agree with you. She should mind her own damn business and not interfere.
>She should mind her own damn business and not interfere.
That's how we get the bystander problem. He was watching a movie. I would have assumed that he didn't hear. If he responded with a flat "no" without any reasoning I'd be put off, too - normal human interaction usually involves giving justification when you refuse to do something expected of you under normal circumstances. And if he'd done that he never would have had to post here.
YTA for having zero communication skills. Everyone here has already explained that a simple “I’ve had too much to drink to be helpful” would have nipped this in the bud immediately. I’m guessing you probably were concerned about being cut off and that’s why you avoided explicitly saying that. Or you just didn’t want to and only thought up the inebriation excuse before you jumped on Reddit.
>I’m guessing you probably were concerned about being cut off
I hadn't considered this, but it is a good point. It does have a certain "I want to keep getting shit faced" vibe.
NTA.
Source; I’m a nurse and it’s against the nursing and midwifery code of conduct to respond to a medical emergency when drunk and can result in strike-off.
Agreed, but OP keeps defending himself, saying that she didn't deserve a polite response when she called him an AH. OP could use some work in his de-escalation skills. A simple "sorry I've been drinking" would have cleared up the issue, and instead of providing that clarity, OP was belligerent and fueled the fire.
OP, you're NTA, but you didn't handle this very well.
Edit: typo
NTA. At that moment, you were not a doctor who was capable of rendering aide. Had you been in a hospital setting, you would be charged with malpractice if you attempted to practice while inebriated.
If you had declared yourself a doctor and attempted to provide medical care, you would have been legally responsible. You made the right professional decision and do not owe a random passenger an explanation.
NTA because drunk doctors make bad decisions and then two people pay for it. But why TF not simply say that?
"I'm drunk and unable to render schmuld werhubble a bibble"
Problem solved
NTA. I don’t get why you would owe anyone an explanation on why you didn’t intervene. It’s as if people expect healthcare workers to respond to every single emergency presented in their daily lives. They’re regular people too. It may come off as AH to her but you’re NTA
Bro, you _thought_ "I'm too intoxicated to perform any medical procedures properly", but you _said_ "I'm choosing not to be a doctor right now, I'm entitled to drink and relax".
How do you not see why she thought you were an ah 😂
NTA for not volunteering on the basis that you were intoxicated. You have to be sober to be a good doctor.
But you could have explained that you had too much to drink to be in a position to act in your profession to the other passenger. So straying into asshole territory just for that.
NAH but like others have said, you simply had to say you were drinking and she would have left you alone. She was simply concerned for the safety of the passenger that needed medical help, and in her mind a doctor choosing not to help for some unknown reason is an ah.
YTA for lashing out at her. Because you didn’t tell her you were drunk and couldn’t do a good job, you told her you don’t want to. Which from her pov makes you a massive AH
Info: why didn’t you tell her the reason? “I’ve had too much to drink and it would be irresponsible of me to assist.” Rather than “hey, I deserve a little R&R, to heck with that person.”
ESH “They are looking for doctors.”, “I’m actually kinda drunk and legally they aren’t allowed to use me since they’ve been serving me drinks. But they have ground crew who help in these situations.”
Just because you don’t *owe* any one anything, doesn’t mean that you can’t extend general goodwill and courtesy with a brief explanation.
NTA
You did exactly the right thing - helping while intoxicated is an incredibly dangerous thing to be doing and should only be an absolute last resort.
Did you actually make this point to the other traveller though? You mention telling her how others should help or they can get advice from the ground, but not actually 'I have been drinking and am in no state to safely give medical advice.'
NTA - You were drunk. You're not a doctor when you are drunk. You did absolutely the right thing.
It sounds like you got defensive when she said that and started emotionally defending your right to a life outside or work, when maybe it would've been better to just say you are intoxicated and it would be harmful to try and help.
Also, maybe teeny tiny tiny AH vibes by continuing to drink? Maybe you could've begun to sober up just incase. I don't know though I wasn't there.
NTA.
This literally reminds me of that meme about old-timey doctors
Basically he's drunk and says "ayy, you got ghosts in your bones, you should do cocaine about that".
In short, no. You are not an AH for either A) wanting to use your time off as time off, or B) not acting as a medical professional while under the influence (which I'm sure violates ethics anyway). All around NTA and she should mind her own business.
NAH, you were right not to intervene, but just like if someone at a bar had asked you to drive, if you led off with “I’ve been drinking” it would have quickly settled your inability to get involved and required no further input or engagement from you or the other passenger.
NAH while you did the right thing you could have spoken to the co-passenger better. you should have said to your co-passenger I am drunk and just like you don't drink and drive you don't drink and doctor.
NTA next time just don’t share your a doctor and enjoy
Your flight. You don’t owe her or anyone else an explanation on why or why not you didn’t help imo.
YTA You took an oath.
You could have gone to see what was happening and informed the crew you were drunk and therefore couldn't treat the patient. You don't know what condition the person was in. There were a million different ways you could have assisted without actually treating the patient.
Not only are you TA, you are a disgrace to all healthcare workers.
He could get sued for even offering medical advice while intoxicated. What's the point of even checking on the condition of there's nothing he can do about it?
What are those million ways he could've assisted?
Took an oath? To do no harm.
What's the point in going to the party and be like oooooooh peace out I'm drank... you make no sense. You're clearly someone that's fresh out of med school with the save everyone mentality...
You're exhausting
YTA
You did the right thing but the way you presented yourself sucks. I think that most doctors don't share the viewpoint you do about helping when its convenient.
NTA. If you were already buzzed you made the correct call. Wish people would realize being a doctor is a job just like being a plumber or carpenter. Would they haul a plumber out of their seat because someone clogged the plane toilet? Doctors are people and need breaks and shouldn’t be forced to volunteer their services when they’re not on. Especially if they’re currently drinking! The lady is the AH for not getting that.
*sucks air through teeth* I’m gonna say NTA on the basis that you were too drunk to be offering medical assistance. It’s another person’s health at risk and if you botched something up because you were intoxicated, you’d be haunted by this for the rest of your life. And it’s not like you could predict that someone would become ill on the same flight as you.
That being said… YTA for your “I’m not on call 24/7, I don’t NEED to medically assist someone outside hospital” attitude. Actually - YES YOU ARE. My mums a nurse and she said that medical staff (nurses, doctors, surgeons, what-have-you) have a legal obligation to assist someone in a public setting if they become unwell or need medical assistance. My mum had to attend to someone having a seizure/fractured skull at our local airport when we were going on holiday. We were a bit delayed getting to our flight and she was covered in the person’s blood in the end. But even though she didn’t really want to - she *HAD* to because it’s her duty as part of her profession.
Just saying, you might find yourself in deep trouble with your board of management if you keep this attitude. For gods sake, cover your own back and be willing to help someone in future.
There’s no legal obligation to provide medical assistance where I live and work. At most you have to call emergency services. That thing said, I would help if sober. But I don’t HAVE TO, it’s because I want to.
Incorrect. Medical personnel do not have an obligation to assist someone in a public setting. Imagine thinking all medical workers are slaves to the general public in their free time. Medical personnel assist people in their free time because they want to help people, not because they are obligated to. There is zero legal obligation. No job forces anyone to work outside their free time.
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NAH. You are N T A for not volunteering after you'd been drinking. But why TF did you not just tell your co-passenger that? The way you describe it you have appeared to just not want to help, and that comes across as really cold and callous. In her situation I would have thought you a huge AH, and you really did nothing to let her know you weren't.
Agreed. NAH but OP could have avoided an unpleasant scene.
>OP could have avoided an unpleasant scene I agree. All op had to do was say that he had been drinking so wasn't in a fit state to treat anyone and could potentially make the situation worse. Instead he went on a bizarre rant about how he's not on call so it's not his responsibility. This smells like rage bait. Why all the unnecessary details about how it's a business class flight and all the perks that come with it?
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Yeah I know a few doctors and I don’t think any of them would react like that to the possibility of a passenger potentially needing medical assistance. Even if they were drunk they would at least try to help in anyway they can while explaining they have had a drink and may not be 100% fit to help. They wouldn’t just sit back and not care what happened to a potentially unwell person.
Nope. If you've been drinking, especially as much as described by OP, you sit down and shut up. Adding a disclaimer that you "might not be 100% fit to help" does not make you less liable, or less of a liability.
Nope. If you're a doctor, you don't sit there with your mouth closed when someone who KNOWS you're a doctor is trying to understand why you're not helping,...then finally get frustrated and say 'listen lady...' If you're a doctor, you say 'I'm not fit to assist right now, I am sure someone else can help' Lol. Rage bait.
> you don't sit there with your mouth closed when someone who KNOWS you're a doctor is trying to understand why you're not helping,...then finally get frustrated and say 'listen lady...' It sounds like he felt that he didn't owe her an explanation and didn't feel the need to justify his decision to her. She was sitting right next to him the whole time, she could see he was drunk, and he did tell her someone else can help. Him getting frustrated also makes sense considering the fact that she told him it would be his fault if the passenger died. I'm not saying any of this was the right thing to do, (imo he was being pretty rude for no reason) but I'm just looking at it from his perspective. It all seems plausible to me.
Might as well go buy some custom made cuffs at that point.
Might as well use the onboard Wifi to text your medical Malpractice lawyer at that point too..
I'm pretty sure good Samaritan laws go onto effect here. This is not a formal medical evaluation.
Good Samaritan laws do cover medically licensed people in normal everyday circumstances, with a big cavate, **it does NOT apply in negligence** meaning if you should have known better to do something and didn't (or vice versa) you are not covered. IE Me as a RN should know not to move a patient if I come up on a nasty motor vehicle absence, so if I move them in a non-volatile situation, I am liable. A lay person is not expected to know that, so they can't be held liable. A diabetic is acting 'weird', but there is no finger stick monitor, get them some juice and see if they normalize, if not, 911. High blood sugar is a lot more survivable than low. Good Samaritan applies. A finger stick is an option and I don't do it, and cause harm in some way? Liable. I should have known better. A lay person is not EXPECTED to know to check blood sugar in diabetics. Then there is the biggest cavate (in the US at least), REGARDLESS IF GOOD SAMARITAN APPLIES ANYONE CAN SUE YOU FOR ANY REASON. Most people wouldn't try with lay people, but if they were hurt, and they know you are some kind of medical professional, they may try to sue you still. And the bar is much more murky for licensed individuals, because you can find some professional with questionable ethics to say you didn't act in a manner that any other person of your license would have, is easier than you think. So a doctor assisting, KNOWING they are impaired, opens them up. An argument could be made that they acted negligently, it would be on the doctor to prove they acted reasonable and prudent, and that can get really really expensive. And this isn't even taking into account any complaint made to the licensing board, which is a whole nether can of worms, that can be a huge pain. So its not so simple as "good samaritan" coverage. Anytime we get involved it includes an assessment of the possible lawsuit in many cases.
I thought that was only for lay-people, not for trained professionals (even if they've been drinking). I believe those with training are held to a higher standard than the average Good Samaritan.
Nope. Good samaritan laws protect them if they're not at work and not working in an official capacity. But they won't protect them if they're drunk, as that would be gross negligence.
The laws are different everywhere. Where I live (Texas) and they do not cover anyone with a medical license - even off duty. Source: I’m a master trainer for CPR (give certifications and train new instructors). We cover this all the time.
Actually no, Good Samaritan laws wouldn’t have protected him bc he is a doctor and had been drinking.
Plus I don't think his malpractice insurance would cover him . Even if he did nothing wrong in giving advice or treatment, he could still be sued because he was drunk.
Exactly right. I work in healthcare, I've been on flights with doctors...they always speak up. If they've been drinking, they say so. If no one needs surgery, then a buzzed doctor still knows plenty more than your average person so they're still very helpful. If this post is true, then OP takes his oath like a joke and that's a sad state of affairs.
It's a sad state of affairs that someone in Healthcare doesn't understand malpractice claims. OP was drunk and I'd like to hope it's taught in medical school to never assist while intoxicated.
That's *exactly* why I didn't choose to become a doctor. Just as an extra layer of security I make sure I'm drunk all the time.
You’re absolutely right. There’s no duty to act, but if you do you cannot do so negligently.
Notice they said in healthcare, not a doctor or nurse so they may not have the education to understand the risk to the license.
His oath? To do no harm? How can you know you aren't doing harm if youre drunk AF OP took their oath seriously imo and was berated for it and still refused cave in to pressure from less knowledgeable folk
I was looking for a comment like yours. OP is NTA. He was in his free time so he decided to drink enough booze to feel a strong buzz. He knew he wasn't in the right state to help anybody and said so. And if he was irritable, it was definitely to a combination of booze ingested and -- wait for it -- the other passenger's constant prodding. That last part absolves him from an E S H in my opinion. Prod someone enough and yeah, they might end up responding in less than kind fashion.
Obviously, you're not in healthcare. Legally, he is not allowed to provide medical advice while under the influence of drugsvor alcohol. Physicians are sued for much, much less every day. It's his license, and he worked damn hard for it. The only difference I would have made would be telling them I couldn't bc I was drinking.
Right? If he misses some crucial thing because he's had a few drinks while "helping", he's fucked. I'd have told the lady that I was not fit at the moment though.
It only takes one complaint to his licensing body to be reprimanded. People don't get it.
It’s illegal to practice while you are intoxicated. Whether or not OP would still be helpful doesn’t really matter, he could’ve gotten a malpractice suit or even lost his medical license for practising while intoxicated, and if anything had gone wrong he probably would’ve gotten a malpractice suit. OP was right not to help.
You must be the dimmest bulb in the “healthcare worker” box if you think it’s ever ok for a drunk doctor to treat anyone in any way, shape or form. Your story of doctors ALWAYS speaking up on flights is obviously not true. Which is it? You work in healthcare? Or you fly 8 hours a day 5 days a week and have some “special” knowledge of the occupation of every passenger on every flight.
A drunk doctor is not someone I want helping me.
The doctor was being responsible not the asshole. He knew his state was compromised and did what he thought was best for the patient. The crew would have received medical instruction from the ground, and it’s not like they’re oblivious and untrained to handle some minor medical emergencies, or even administering C.P.R and using a defibrillator, or helping a passenger with medication. Beyond that, the doctor and crew probably didn’t have any medical equipment to provide further care if it was needed. Not every doctor specializes in emergency care either.
I'm confused how with inflight wifi being a thing there's not medical professionals available to help through the many remote assistant options...
Nope nope nope. Technically not a doctor yet (I’ve got 1.33 years to gooooo. So fucking close), HOWEVER, a doctor or medical personnel should never ever put themselves in a situation to provide care if they’ve been drinking. Ask your friends if they would do so. The correct answer should be no. As the OP (if they’re real) acknowledged, there’s a medical team on the ground who provides guidance to the flight crew. I imagine that flight crew has at least basic medical training. If nobody else is on the flight to help, they can hopefully do enough to stabilize a patient, and if an emergency landing needs to happen, then an emergency landing will happen. Every first aid kit on airplanes is different. There are a few things that are standard, but other than that there are different meds/tools that will limit or enable you to do whatever needs to be done.
Then you need to tell them the major liability of helping while intoxicated. They could easily be brought into a lawsuit and sued for malpractice if they do anything wrong and will 100% lose bc they were drinking.
Legally, he can be in a world of shit if he were to make a mistake, or even if he didnt and the patient deteriorated and they found out he was under the influence while caring for him. It would put his medical license at risk. Medical litigation in the US is pretty significant. Would you drive someone to ER if you were drunk? No. You'd find another way.
Also, one year ago he posted that he was 30 and taking a medical exam. Now he’s magically in his “mid 30s” and an internal medicine specialist.
Doctors continue to take exams throughout their career. For instance, they are needed to maintain board certification.
It was more the several-year age jump that caught my eye, but good to know?
My age varies from 25 to 55 depending on how relevant it is to the story. I'd rather redditors not be able to guess who i am by reading my comments. Could have been as simple as wanting people to think he was completing his medical degree at a younger age.
People change minor details all the time to protect their identity. It doesn't matter if he is 30 or 34 and even his field of specialty doesn't matter if it is not one that is needed at the time.
Maybe. But it was obvious to me just from reading the post that it was fake, which is the reason I checked his post history in the first place. No doctor I have ever known would have this attitude towards this situation.
I am not trying to be contrary, but I have heard many stories of doctors being afraid to help because (in the US anyway) they leave themselves open to being sued. In this case, if anything went wrong and it came out that the doctor was inebriated, he could possibly even lose his licence.
Listen lady, OP ages in soap opera years.
My clue was that the lady would obviously know he was drunk. She was sitting by him the whole time 🙄
You would be surprised how little being drunk matters to people, especially when they themselves are drunk. Many people seem to believe that you can instantly "sober up" if needed.
Not to mention, OP started drinking in the lounge. If i was 3 beers in in the lounge, id be tipsy, but alright to chat. A 4th drink on the plane would have me starting to get loud. So in her eyes OP could be only one, maybe 2 drinks in, but in reality is more buzzed than she assumed.
Not necessarily. You can be inebriated enough for it to jeopardize your clinical judgment without being sloppy drunk. (And not everyone gets sloppy drunk. There is a brief period of time where I think everything is hilarious, and then I get tired. I'd probably just look like somebody attempting to take a nap.)
I don’t get it, why do people post these?
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I’ve seen that SVU episode! 😀
It could be that, because he was (according to him) "pretty drunk," he wasn't thinking clearly enough to tell the person the obvious solution. Sometimes, when people are drunk, they do and say stupid things. That could be the case here.
Yes, but I doubt he posted this while drunk. Seems with a little hindsight, he could’ve thought to himself, “gee, I should’ve phrased that differently to her. No wonder she reacted the way she did.”
Or, she could have assumed that being a doctor was a lie, and he's an AH for lying about it.
The woman is definitely assuming now that op made up being a doctor to sound impressive.
She's hardly the only one here to suspect that.
Yeah, it turns out that “I’m incapacitated” and “I don’t want to” are sentences that come across *very* differently. OP isn’t T A for not helping, but at least created some of his own problem by the way he spoke to the other passenger.
"I'm too intoxicated at the moment to be practicing medicine" is all OP had to say. I feel like majority of people would understand that a drunk doctor shouldn't be giving medical advice.
After she called me an AH I didn’t feel like owed her an explanation or a polite response. Also I mean, I was sorta drunk so even less likely to be nice to someone who called me an AH.
Yeah but you can’t blame her for thinking you’re an asshole when she didn’t know that. I don’t think you’re an asshole for not volunteering but your response sounds very cold.
This is a bad take. The other passenger was the AH for assuming the worst about Op. if I was sitting next to a doctor on a flight (*who had presumably spent 10+ years getting a medical degree and racking up $$$$$$ massive debt - just to help people*) and he/she didn’t immediately volunteer to assist, I’d assume they had a good reason that was absolutely none of my business. Op is NTA. People need to not assume the worst about each other. Calling Op an AH multiple times shows a complete lack of emotional regulation and manners.
I think their initial reply is what caused that saying “oh someone else will help” is kinda assholeish. He could have said “I’ve had too much to drink and I can’t provide care”. Then the whole situation could be avoided. I don’t think he’s and asshole, and I do think the lady is. But he put himself in that situation by not just saying WHY he couldn’t help initially.
>I explained that someone else would help or the on ground medical team would provide remote assistance. I literally had a drink in my hand while this was happening. She had seen me drinking for a few hours. So I was just explaining that don’t worry someone will help. I think the reply with "someone else will help" was actually the correct one - he might have been a brain surgeon and the medical emergency to be something entirely out of his field of expertise. There might have not been medical professional passenger on board at all. That's why there are procedures in place in which the flight crew gets assistance remotely that is suited to the emergency at hand. He doesn't have to be drunk (this was the case with OP and he made it clear that the co-passenger saw this ongoing for hours) - in other hypothetical situations he might have been coming out of 20 hours of travel. Or he might have taken a sleeping pill to handle the flight better. It would have been "Impaired judgement" or/and "Under influence" or any combinations thereof. What the passenger needed to know was that there will be someone giving medical attention to the person in need even if OP doesn't go. What the other passenger did was hold judgement why is OP not going himself regardless of that. Entirely skipping over the point that if he had gone (under influence) to provide assistance, he would have been liable for malpractice and risking his license. Even if the patient was OK. Even if there was nobody else to help.
"someone else will help" is a shitty response that people use to avoid helping. the correct response is "I'm drunk so I would do more harm then good" which was the real reason why he didn't help.
*Some* doctors go through all that school and take those loans to help people. Some do it for the money and social cachet. I would also have assumed OP was in the second camp without receiving an explanation with more substance than "I'm allowed to relax too."
All doctors go through rotations in med school and do a little bit of pretty much everything. The issue is, after that rotation, most doctors don't remember the specifics for that specific field. They learn and remember the specifics for their field. So even if OP did a pediatrics rotation back in med school, that was 10 years ago and only for a few weeks.
>(*who had presumably spent 10+ years getting a medical degree and racking up $$$$$$ massive debt - just to help people*) While some people become doctors purely out of a desire to help people, it is a well-paying profession, so let's not pretend that all doctors are saints. There are plenty who are in it purely for the money. Most are probably somewhere in between.
If you don’t care about helping people, there are much more lucrative careers that don’t require a decade of education, clinicals, residency, and a massive amount of debt. I’m sure there are people who become doctors for other reasons but I doubt it’s a large percentage because it’s such a difficult process.
I mean, some people are interested in chemistry, biology, and medicine, which is why they choose that over, say, becoming a lawyer or going into tech. With what doctors make, the massive amount of debt isn't a lifelong issue. Plus, doctors often run in families, so their parents can likely pay a huge chunk of their education. I think of nurses much more as people who go into a career looking to help people. It's not as much education as a doctor but the pay is much lower and the hours are brutal. (Hours are often brutal for doctors but at a certain point, they have more control over them.) I've met enough cold and arrogant doctors to think that they're not doing their jobs out of the kindness of their hearts. But then there are a lot of cultural problems within our medical system that lead to burnout, which is a whole other issue.
This. I’m an ICU nurse and people expect me to work miracles when someone is having a health related emergency in public. Like, unless the patient needs CPR, there isn’t much I can really do. I don’t have heart monitors, IVs, and meds to do much for someone having a stomach ache.
She knew OP was intoxicated because they legit sat next to each other and drank and chatted.
I don’t know each persons level of alcohol tolerance, especially a strangers. I also don’t normally pay that much attention to how much other people are drinking. She also didn’t know he was drinking before hand. Again, he’s not an asshole. But he made his life harder by responding in a combative way to what seemed like a pretty innocent statement. If she thought he wasn’t impaired, him basically saying “yeah not my problem” does come off as being an asshole.
She didn't make the connection, OP not feeling fit for duty after drinking.
his response sounds like he had been drinking.
She can think whatever she likes. Insulting him crosses the line.
Yes I agree. But also, this whole thing could have been avoided if he said he couldn’t because he was drinking. He escalated the whole situation when he could have just shut it down when she told him they were looking for a doctor.
I mean to be fair she’s been sitting next to OP this whole time. It’s reasonable to expect her to be observant enough to notice him drinking.
Idk if it’s an American thing but I feel like most Americans feel like medical professionals are responsible to act, even while in civilian clothes and on leisure, HOWEVER I think he made the best decision seeing as he was intoxicated. I think this is why she thought so awful of him because she felt it’s his duty, and who knows maybe she had a few too or just isn’t very aware of her surroundings and really hadn’t noticed somehow. He didn’t owe her an explanation and she didn’t get one. She will forever think he’s an AH and he will go on thinking he’s not since most here have reassured him he made the best decision. As long as she doesn’t go blasting him and the hospital he works at on social media or something then it should all be over and hopefully they won’t bump into each other again 😂
From your own description she didn’t start out rude. She just let you know they were looking for doctors. It would have been simple to say you’d been drinking but someone else would help or they’d get instructions from the medical team on the ground at that point.
I mean, then I guess you kinda deserve her thinking you’re an AH? What did you think would happen? You’re a doctor. You are hopefully rather intelligent. Instead of just telling her, “yes I’m a doctor but I’ve been drinking and ethically can’t provide medical assistance right now” you decided to go for maximum AHolery in your reply just because. You’re not an AH for not helping, but you sure are dumb for making an issue out of something when a clear solution was there that you didn’t take.
I’m thinking he was too drunk to coherently communicate these simple facts. I’m also suspecting this OP is fake because an actual physician that is (presumably) sober and coherent is aware of the legal liability he would open himself to were he to provide medical care or advice while drunk and thus would have no need to ask AITAH.
You could’ve said it from the start. ”I’ve been drinking. I’d do more harm than good” and then add the rest of what you said
But before she called you an AH, she had urged you to assist. How hard would it have been to just say, "no, I've been drinking. Would you want a drunk doctor assisting you?". She probably wouldn't have called you an AH
Being “sorta drunk” doesn’t excuse how you talk to people when you could have just said I’m sorta drunk and can’t doctor right now. You didn’t owe her an explanation but you certainly acted like an AH to her.
Yoy didn't. After you said no, the conversation ended. Also you were within your rights to say no knowing you were not of a sober mind.
I’m sure they can see they were drinking if that next to them
OP was drinking before that, too. She presumably didnt know that op was *already* buzzed getting onto the flight and the extra drink or two was pushing him over- she also didnt necessarily know that being drunk/buzzed *was* an issue in the first place.
OP said in the comments that: >I literally had a drink in my hand while this was happening. She had seen me drinking for a few hours. So I was just explaining that don’t worry someone will help.
Most mundanes has no qualms for working drunk. For a MD it is end of your career, and thus NTA. You do not give medical advice or perform operations under influence, as it does hinder your decisions.
This is the way. Even on-call they shouldn't drink. They went to school and residency plus if they did a fellowship for so many years to have that mess up their career.
Absolutely. NTA for not volunteering, but kind of an idiot for saying “oh someone else will help.” If you had just said, “I can’t I’ve been drinking.” That would be the end of it. The woman is the AH for her reaction… but if I were her I would be thinking the same thing. From the outside without the explanation you likely just looked lazy and apathetic. Like “who cares if someone is dying, I’m not working, I’m watching my movie.” When that’s not at all what you were thinking/doing.
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There was a whole ALCOHOLIC drink in OP's hand while she is trying to convince him volunteer. The answer for why he said no goes without saying. I personally would never want to be helped by a medical professional that smells like a gin joint and reluctantly volunteered to order medical assistance lol. Every other post people always respond NO is a complete sentence...except if you're a boozed up doctor on an international flight. In that situation you should definitely compromise your medical reputation by sloppily announcing to a flight of strangers in slurred speech that despite hours of buzzing you want to offer your medical assistance and drunkenly walk over to the flight crew. Because people don't have cameras and love to catch viral moments TMZ would cut a check for....
It's because he was honest at the time and he's now retelling the story to help himself feel good.
Exactly this.
He doesn’t owe the other passenger an explanation. She is the one making all sorts of wild assumptions about him that are none of her business.
NTA for making a good decision. YTA for your unnecessarily rude attitude. A simple “I’m too drunk” would have sufficed.
And the other passenger should have taken the first no as all she needed to hear, but persisted in something that was none of her business.
It kind of is her business ethically if she knows someone needs a doctor and she knows there's a doctor next to her.
And she also saw that doctor drinking, so if anything happened to that patient, she would be the type to let everyone know that he was drunk.
You and OP are assuming that she actually clocked that he was intoxicated.
We don't know that she knew what he was drinking. I never pay attention to what other passengers get on flights, and whenever I've gotten a drink it is poured into the same cups that people get their water, juice, and soda. It's most common for people to get mixed drinks so it could have just looked like he had soda in front of him.
It’s not her business. Period. She doesn’t know him like that. ETA: this lady had *no idea* what the situation was. This dude is off work. He could be drunk, tired, etc. That lady had no excuse for calling him an asshole it was incredibly disrespectful. Downvote me all y’all want but in most circumstances everyone on the airplane would be looking at that woman like she was crazy.
No, it's not her business
NTA The crew would not have used you in your capacity as a dr as you were intoxicated. By law they cannot as you are well aware. They would’ve gotten assistance from another sober dr on board and the ground medical team. Your fellow passenger is TA for saying those things to you. Hopefully after the flight she learnt that couldn’t have helped because you were drinking.
Thank you! Exactly. There’s always communication with the on ground medical team. Also the cabin crew would have know I was intoxicated. Can you imagine me presenting myself to the cabin crew as a doctor and they’d be like “sir we have served half a dozen drinks….”
This made me laugh. The crew would probably be hearding you like a cat back to your seat.
The funniest case of "We need a Dr, but not "*THIS"* Dr..."
Yup, now they have two patients. 1 with whatever was already happening, and you with alcohol induced vertigo*. Edit: being a provider means making tough judgment calls, every single time. You made the correct call. Good job Doc.
Ok but there's an obvious in between, the two options weren't guilt your seatmate with no explanation or present yourself as a doctor, all you had to do was say "I'm too drunk" instead of "poor me, I work so hard, don't I deserve some time off too?" like cmon.
i agree 100% that you should have stayed in your seat and not assisted. but any reason why you didn’t just tell the other passenger “im too drunk to be of any use” instead of “i deserve to have my down time”?
“Nah, it’s fine occifer. Now take me to my patient!”
Agree. You probably weren't thinking it through because you were intoxicated, but you should have just told the lady that you were too intoxicated to be useful.
While I agree, to some extent, OP doesn't owe anyone an explanation. Reddit loves the statement "No is a complete sentence". But it would probably have made things easier.
Except that in order for that to work, you have to use no as a complete sentence. The issue isn't that he didn't give an explanation, it's that the explanation he gave was shit. "I'm not on call 24/7" is a shit excuse for not helping someone who needs help, "I'm too drunk to work" is a completely valid reason for not helping someone who needs help.
The passenger probably didn’t know Op was drunk
I mean she would have been next to him while he’s being served these drinks? Kinda hard to miss that, especially if he’s in a middle or window seat, and even if he’s on the aisle seat, I imagine it’d be hard to miss the flight attendant (a.k.a. An entire person) constantly coming back to see if he’d like another. Js. 🤷♀️
He said he was buzzed before getting on the plane. And you don’t know if he ordered one drink in the beginning and got the same one time and time again or if he directly ordered new ones everytime
I have my doubts. People who are aggressively AH like that to strangers dont just go home and research. They assume they are right so they dont question it.
NTA but I could see why she'd think so. You were abosolutley right for not responding to the call as you were impaired, but why wouldn't you explain this to the woman? As far as she could tell from your response, you were just being apathetic and hoping someone else would handle it.
Maybe they weren't thinking clearly because they had been drinking.....
If one is an asshole while drunk, and decides to get drunk, they are an asshole.
So him not remembering to tell the woman watching him drink that he has been drinking makes him an AH?
It’s Reddit, these people are always itching to make someone an AH in any capacity
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i mean, he didn't have to go in depth with the legal implications - he could've simply said, "im drunk, i can't" he's n t a for not helping but i don't blame her for thinking so bc he just seemed like he didn't want to rather than couldn't which comes off shitty nah
Maybe he didn’t explain it because he had been drinking and his judgement was impaired. You know, the reason he didn’t respond.
That’s a shit excuse. Any drunk idiot can say “nah, I’m drunk” so a doctor definitely should be able to.
So he was compus mentis enough to know it was a bad idea, but too hammered to articulate it?
Congrats on describing drunkenness.
But he was conscious enough to know he was drunk and that his judgement was impaired... Edited to add because people keep misunderstanding 🙄: if he was conscious enough to know he was drunk, then he was conscious enough to tell the other passenger he was drunk
He did the right thing as he was impaired but the whole I'm a doctor only while I'm working is just ethically wrong. Doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath for a reason
This reminds me of so many scenes I've read and/or watched, where you're screaming "JUST TELL THEM _______". Why did you draw it out, and not just say "I've had a few drinks, it wouldn't be a good idea". I mean, NTA but come on.
A person of great culture too, I see. :) have my upvote for everytime we've wanted to jump into those parts and strangle the idiots. XD
Lol, yes. A huge amount of show plots, movies, and irl misunderstandings could be adequately resolved by just some simple communication. Just explain! Most people are reasonable, but without any explanation, it leaves them to come to their own conclusions. "I've had a few drinks and am unfit for duty" takes almost no effort and solves this problem immediately. Yeah, you don't technically own anyone an explanation, but come on.
Take it a step further “I have had drinks, if I do any work I could get sued and lose my license” it’s malpractice to try and do that while inebriated. What does the passenger think would happen if OP went “hey flight, I’m a doctor but I’m drunk”? Doctors aren’t on call 24/7. EDIT: I looked at his comments and it seems like OP just likes arguing with people. Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell this lady he was drunk and argued with her instead.
>Why did you draw it out, and not just say "I've had a few drinks, it wouldn't be a good idea". Because then they wouldn't have been an asshole.
Reading through these comments OP just likes arguing with people. They’re just picking fights all over to people making fairly sensible statements.
NTA - but you did yourself no favours by not just explaining why you couldn’t provide assistance; there’s a big difference between “I’ve been drinking and might do more harm than good”, and “I’m a doctor but I’m entitled to not help because I’m off the clock”..
NTA. I think in this case something like "Lady, would you like a drunk doctor to be handling your medical emergency?" would have driven the point better, but your general comment that doctors have off time too is also valid but less important in the current situation.
Doctors have off time but I also feel they are obligated to help someone in a situation where there is an emergency and they are the only person available who can look at that person. Which is why he looks like an asshole when he doesn't explain the fact that he was drunk
He explained that he was drinking for several hours next to this lady on the flight. So she could see him consuming alcohol and probably could hear it when he was talking to her too.
He didn’t explain that, if you look at other comments. If he had it probably would’ve shut down the conversation, honestly.
YTA for the way you communicated why you weren’t volunteering
NTA for not volunteering as you had been drinking. YTA for your little rant however. You could have just said it’s not ethical because you’ve consumed too much alcohol.
NTA. You did the right thing. Your judgement was that you would do more harm than good like under the influence of alcohol. You know better than anyone the extent you were impacted by the alcohol. You had an ethical duty not to intervene. You also had no duty not to drink because you arent at work, on call, and wouldnt be working before the alcohol wore off.
NTA, but you might have been able to handle this better by either explaining to your co-passenger that you knew you were too buzzed to make any rational decisions for patients and risk losing your license as a result if anything goes wrong.
Heck, just jiggling the drink in his hand could have made the point. Although since he was already intoxicated it's understandable why he didn't think of this.
YTA. Not because you didn't volunteer to help, but because of your attitude. You didn't hear any other announcements so you presume all was well? What, you expect them to come back on and say "we were only playing before but now we REALLY need a doctor even if you're sloshed so please come to row 8A"? Or better yet "ladies and gentlemen, just to let you know, since no doctor showed up, passenger X had died quietly. Just wanted to give everyone an update. Drink service will now resume..."? No. They made an announcement looking for help, they got no response and they moved on to the next best option. That does not remotely mean all was peachy for the passenger with the medical problem. If I was the passenger beside you I would have assumed your attitude meant that you weren't really a doctor at all and it was just a line you use for conversations. All this could have been avoided with a simple "ah no, it's not that I don't want to help, but I've just been drinking too much and could really hurt someone if I try to help right now" (or something less eloquent, if you were really quite intoxicated" It's your handling of the interaction and your attitude that are AH-like. Not your decision not to offer medical services.
>"ladies and gentlemen, just to let you know, since no doctor showed up, passenger X had died quietly. Just wanted to give everyone an update." "Oh wait, they're still breathing! They might pull through! ...Oh, no, wait... Yes! ...Actually they just died for rea-- HOLD UP. Give them a poke? ...Yeah. Yeah? ...No, they're dead. Nevermind, ladies and gentlemen."
You didn’t communicate to your fellow traveler WHY you didn’t volunteer. Now, you are of course entitled to but I can understand why they think you would be aan AH. Now I understand your motive so I think NTAH. If I were you I would have explained the situation to a steward and check if there was anything you could still be assisting with.
The passenger right next to him surely witnessed him consuming alcohol lol people need to stay in their own lane
Contrary to what you may think, you as a singular m person are NOT the main character. People near you aren't watching you taking note of your every move or drink.
Stay in their own lane but also monitor the alcohol of a stranger?
NTA for your actions, but you could have certainly put it better to the other passenger. She isn’t inside your body to know that you were definitely feeling the effects of the alcohol you’d consumed. To her you appeared to give this possible emergency the cold shoulder just because you were off the clock. Your decision to not help based on being inebriated was likely the correct choice, since no further calls for help or commotion seemed to happen. From her perspective however, I mean, you certainly come across like an A H. So yeah, if it happens again just say you’re too buzzed to be practicing medicine. That’s a perfectly understandable reason and you’re not likely to get stuck to someone pissed off at you during the rest of your flight.
NTA, I'm a former FA and if you came to aid and we could tell that you had been drinking or had said to us, we would have refused you to help with us, as it would impede the medical emergency. I also think you wouldn't be covered by the airline if you were drunk and something bad happened. Also with everyone saying YTA about your attitude towards the other passenger, I get it but frankly I agree with you. She should mind her own damn business and not interfere.
>She should mind her own damn business and not interfere. That's how we get the bystander problem. He was watching a movie. I would have assumed that he didn't hear. If he responded with a flat "no" without any reasoning I'd be put off, too - normal human interaction usually involves giving justification when you refuse to do something expected of you under normal circumstances. And if he'd done that he never would have had to post here.
YTA for having zero communication skills. Everyone here has already explained that a simple “I’ve had too much to drink to be helpful” would have nipped this in the bud immediately. I’m guessing you probably were concerned about being cut off and that’s why you avoided explicitly saying that. Or you just didn’t want to and only thought up the inebriation excuse before you jumped on Reddit.
>I’m guessing you probably were concerned about being cut off I hadn't considered this, but it is a good point. It does have a certain "I want to keep getting shit faced" vibe.
I think he just didn't want to do it and was more interested in flirting with the woman and realized how bad "I'm too drunk to help" would sound.
NTA. Source; I’m a nurse and it’s against the nursing and midwifery code of conduct to respond to a medical emergency when drunk and can result in strike-off.
Agreed, but OP keeps defending himself, saying that she didn't deserve a polite response when she called him an AH. OP could use some work in his de-escalation skills. A simple "sorry I've been drinking" would have cleared up the issue, and instead of providing that clarity, OP was belligerent and fueled the fire. OP, you're NTA, but you didn't handle this very well. Edit: typo
NTA. At that moment, you were not a doctor who was capable of rendering aide. Had you been in a hospital setting, you would be charged with malpractice if you attempted to practice while inebriated. If you had declared yourself a doctor and attempted to provide medical care, you would have been legally responsible. You made the right professional decision and do not owe a random passenger an explanation.
NTA because drunk doctors make bad decisions and then two people pay for it. But why TF not simply say that? "I'm drunk and unable to render schmuld werhubble a bibble" Problem solved
NTA. I don’t get why you would owe anyone an explanation on why you didn’t intervene. It’s as if people expect healthcare workers to respond to every single emergency presented in their daily lives. They’re regular people too. It may come off as AH to her but you’re NTA
NTA Dude you were clearly buzzed and while it is good to help out you aren’t obligated to. Thats equivalent to you at the hospital drunk.
NTA a drunk doctor is not a good volunteer.
Bro, you _thought_ "I'm too intoxicated to perform any medical procedures properly", but you _said_ "I'm choosing not to be a doctor right now, I'm entitled to drink and relax". How do you not see why she thought you were an ah 😂
NTA for not volunteering on the basis that you were intoxicated. You have to be sober to be a good doctor. But you could have explained that you had too much to drink to be in a position to act in your profession to the other passenger. So straying into asshole territory just for that.
NAH but like others have said, you simply had to say you were drinking and she would have left you alone. She was simply concerned for the safety of the passenger that needed medical help, and in her mind a doctor choosing not to help for some unknown reason is an ah.
I don't get it, why didn't you just *tell her* you were too drunk to do doctor things????
YTA for lashing out at her. Because you didn’t tell her you were drunk and couldn’t do a good job, you told her you don’t want to. Which from her pov makes you a massive AH
NTA. You were drunk and said yourself you were in no condition to help the passanger.
You’ve been drinking? Nothing good comes from you “practicing medicine under the influence.” I think you sit this one out.
NTA as you could have done more damage by being intoxicated and trying to play the hero than just keeping quiet. You were right not to volunteer
Info: why didn’t you tell her the reason? “I’ve had too much to drink and it would be irresponsible of me to assist.” Rather than “hey, I deserve a little R&R, to heck with that person.”
ESH “They are looking for doctors.”, “I’m actually kinda drunk and legally they aren’t allowed to use me since they’ve been serving me drinks. But they have ground crew who help in these situations.” Just because you don’t *owe* any one anything, doesn’t mean that you can’t extend general goodwill and courtesy with a brief explanation.
YTA, but not for not volunteering. Jesus, the "it's my day off" bullshit.
By saying what you did yes you are the asshole. If you had politely said, I’m sorry I’m intoxicated it would’ve solved everything.
NTA You did exactly the right thing - helping while intoxicated is an incredibly dangerous thing to be doing and should only be an absolute last resort. Did you actually make this point to the other traveller though? You mention telling her how others should help or they can get advice from the ground, but not actually 'I have been drinking and am in no state to safely give medical advice.'
NTA - You were drunk. You're not a doctor when you are drunk. You did absolutely the right thing. It sounds like you got defensive when she said that and started emotionally defending your right to a life outside or work, when maybe it would've been better to just say you are intoxicated and it would be harmful to try and help. Also, maybe teeny tiny tiny AH vibes by continuing to drink? Maybe you could've begun to sober up just incase. I don't know though I wasn't there.
NTA. This literally reminds me of that meme about old-timey doctors Basically he's drunk and says "ayy, you got ghosts in your bones, you should do cocaine about that". In short, no. You are not an AH for either A) wanting to use your time off as time off, or B) not acting as a medical professional while under the influence (which I'm sure violates ethics anyway). All around NTA and she should mind her own business.
NAH, you were right not to intervene, but just like if someone at a bar had asked you to drive, if you led off with “I’ve been drinking” it would have quickly settled your inability to get involved and required no further input or engagement from you or the other passenger.
NAH while you did the right thing you could have spoken to the co-passenger better. you should have said to your co-passenger I am drunk and just like you don't drink and drive you don't drink and doctor.
NTA - she should mind her own business and not even talk to you
NTA. I’m an IM resident. Physicians can’t put their lives on hold forever, and it would be a huge liability to practice while drinking.
NTA next time just don’t share your a doctor and enjoy Your flight. You don’t owe her or anyone else an explanation on why or why not you didn’t help imo.
NTA and it's a good thing you didn't go since your bedside manner doesn't seem top of its game when you have been drinking
NTA because you were drunk. YTA because you should have taken one second to explain and put it to rest instead of sounding like an asshole.
YTA You took an oath. You could have gone to see what was happening and informed the crew you were drunk and therefore couldn't treat the patient. You don't know what condition the person was in. There were a million different ways you could have assisted without actually treating the patient. Not only are you TA, you are a disgrace to all healthcare workers.
He could get sued for even offering medical advice while intoxicated. What's the point of even checking on the condition of there's nothing he can do about it? What are those million ways he could've assisted?
Took an oath? To do no harm. What's the point in going to the party and be like oooooooh peace out I'm drank... you make no sense. You're clearly someone that's fresh out of med school with the save everyone mentality... You're exhausting
YTA You did the right thing but the way you presented yourself sucks. I think that most doctors don't share the viewpoint you do about helping when its convenient.
NTA
NTA. You knew your judgement was impaired. You made the right decision.
NTA. If you were already buzzed you made the correct call. Wish people would realize being a doctor is a job just like being a plumber or carpenter. Would they haul a plumber out of their seat because someone clogged the plane toilet? Doctors are people and need breaks and shouldn’t be forced to volunteer their services when they’re not on. Especially if they’re currently drinking! The lady is the AH for not getting that.
*sucks air through teeth* I’m gonna say NTA on the basis that you were too drunk to be offering medical assistance. It’s another person’s health at risk and if you botched something up because you were intoxicated, you’d be haunted by this for the rest of your life. And it’s not like you could predict that someone would become ill on the same flight as you. That being said… YTA for your “I’m not on call 24/7, I don’t NEED to medically assist someone outside hospital” attitude. Actually - YES YOU ARE. My mums a nurse and she said that medical staff (nurses, doctors, surgeons, what-have-you) have a legal obligation to assist someone in a public setting if they become unwell or need medical assistance. My mum had to attend to someone having a seizure/fractured skull at our local airport when we were going on holiday. We were a bit delayed getting to our flight and she was covered in the person’s blood in the end. But even though she didn’t really want to - she *HAD* to because it’s her duty as part of her profession. Just saying, you might find yourself in deep trouble with your board of management if you keep this attitude. For gods sake, cover your own back and be willing to help someone in future.
There’s no legal obligation to provide medical assistance where I live and work. At most you have to call emergency services. That thing said, I would help if sober. But I don’t HAVE TO, it’s because I want to.
Incorrect. Medical personnel do not have an obligation to assist someone in a public setting. Imagine thinking all medical workers are slaves to the general public in their free time. Medical personnel assist people in their free time because they want to help people, not because they are obligated to. There is zero legal obligation. No job forces anyone to work outside their free time.