Arse Covering 101

If you're a medical professional, perhaps a paediatrician, and receive a letter from a mother drawing attention to the fact that you missed all the signs that point to a baby having a particular skull deformity, here's a few tips for you on how to respond in your own letter:

1. Make sure to get the tone of said letter just right; you should aim for a mix of arrogant bastard and condescending dickhead. If you pretend that you're God while writing, it should be perfect.

2. Ignore all the physical characteristics that were brought to your attention, the ones that should have set off alarm bells, and instead focus on one characteristic that you did notice, the "slight facial asymmetry", that isn't actually related to the syndrome in question.

3. Lie and say you mentioned this asymmetry to the mother and had a conversation about it - say you remember that particular conversation clearly even though you see hundreds of babies. Include a copy of the medical notes where a nurse has written "slight facial asymmetry" but don't include the copy of the notes where you ruled a line through everything and signed it - hopefully the mother would have lost these notes. She hasn't.

4. Point out the unrelated matter where the mother chose to not get her baby prophelacticly injected at birth with a synthetic substance for a rare blood disorder "against medical advice" rather than state that the mother chose to be informed in her birth choices and not swayed by fearmongering doctors.

5. Chastise the mother for not coming back to you for the six week infant check up, even though you said it was fine for her to go to any General Practitioner unless there was something in particular she was concerned about.

6. Completely deny that you said anything offensive in regards to the mother's breasts but then contradict yourself and say you were only trying to be light-hearted because she was having difficulty establishing breastfeeding - ignore the fact that the notes you've attached say the child fed like a champ from the get go.

7. At all times remember your job is to make the mother feel guilty for daring to have a child without obtaining a medical degree first.

8. Continue to demand payment of $400 even though you didn't do your job properly, but mention that Medicare pays for some of it so the mother has nothing to complain about.

9. Maintain that the syndrome, which is visible in photos from birth, must have developed some time after the mother and child left the hospital.

10. Once you've had your secretary type it up for you, make sure you back date it so that it appears you responded immediately after being contacted instead of being honest and documenting that it took you a month.

11. Above all else, blame everyone else for everything.

Whilst you may think that writing a letter like this would just inflame the mother, you'd be wrong. It is true she will feel intense rage when reading you words and that bitter, angry tears will spill from her eyes, but, because you've managed to work in so many insults and pick at the frayed edges of her being, her very soul will be crushed and instead of fighting you, she will instead curl up in bed and cry... a great result with the added bonus that your indemnity insurance premiums won't go up.

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Glowless rocked the Aussie Bloggers Conference thanks to

HealthyChart and Baby Goes Retro and Simply Colors