Real-life Grey's Anatomy

Those of you who watch Grey's Anatomy know the situation I'm describing - when all the interns are sitting around the hospital, waiting for something to do, and they hear an announcement that there's some crazy or ridiculous trauma case on its way in. Rather than show any sign of sympathy for the patient or his/her family, they immediately jump on the opportunity to participate in some medically unusual or interesting surgery. They chat about the kind of surgery that needs to be done, discuss the possible cause of the symptom and argue over who will be the one on the surgery. Amidst all of that, they never once discuss the patient or his/her family; they're too caught up in the excitement of the medicine. I used to wonder how they could do that.

Then today I had a real-life Grey's Anatomy moment. My boss walked into my office this morning after the weekly command management meeting and reported that a confirmed case of H5N1 (avian influenza) that had died last night. She was on her way to the Ministry of Health to try to get permission for us send a team to investigate the outbreak. If they gave us permission, one person from my office would be be allowed to go. Within seconds, my coworkers and I became the Grey's Anatomy interns. We started discussing H5N1 and previous outbreaks and the spread of disease and outbreak investigation and the health care system of Egypt and anything else we could think of related to a case of avian influenza. (For those of you who wondered, this was the 51st case in Egypt and the 26th fatality.) We didn't outwardly argue about who would be the one chosen for the case, but I could tell we were all silently vying for the position, trying to figure out why we should each be the one infected and how we could be the one chosen. I had my argument fully prepared within minutes of the first announcement about the case.

But, if this were Grey's Anatomy, the moment would have ended with the case being sent to Mercy West (another hospital, for those of you who aren't as hooked on the show as I am). The Ministry of Health never granted us permission to do the investigation.