This is an ABC podcast.

A quick note, this episode is one from our archives.

One time, maybe about a year or so ago, we had a patient who was very unwell and was quite agitated and aggressive.

And we were able to manage that from a mental health point of view.

But medically, he was a little bit unstable as well.

This is Orla.

She's a registered psychiatric nurse,

and she works in a busy, big city hospital.

So we had called Code Blue, like a rapid response

for the medical team to come and review him.

And one of the senior or more doctors that arrived said,

oh, his heart rate is this, and his pressure is that because he's agitated, there's nothing

else wrong with him. Like, just leave him be. Orla didn't agree. I was very much like, no, that's

not the case. Like, he's been asleep. Like, I've been looking after this patient all day. This is not from agitation. You know, this might be a side-effective medication. I think there's something physical going on here. And they very much kind of brushed off what we were saying, kind of thought that he just knew better. And I'm the doctor here. This is how it is. It wasn't until another male doctor joined Orla that the first doctor would listen.

He was very dismissive.

Didn't even kind of look at me when I was speaking to him, which I found really quite rude.

You know, almost looking past me, didn't really want to speak to me at all.

So I don't know if it came from like the fact

that I was a female or I was younger than him or that I was a nurse.

In the end, the patient got the treatment they needed and all was fine. And in the grand

scheme of things, that dismissiveness and lack of eye contact that Orla experienced was a pretty low-level

offense. It was a high-pressure situation, it wasn't bullying, it wasn't threatening, it was just

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