Toxic
II.III.II
TOXIC
I have to admit, it all appeared too good to be true. And in a way, it kinda was. As fate would have it, Dr Sleazy would be joining our firm. Dr Sleazy was a resident specialist renowned for his medical ineptitude, inappropriate behaviour, and all-round hatefulness.
Not a single person had one good thing to say about him. Hell, most people would flee the second they spotted him. And now we were stuck with him. Much like Dr Criminal – the incompetent, fatally lazy house officer I’d worked with during my ortho days – this guy somehow managed to remain in the system despite countless formal complaints and reports. He’d been kicked out of the emergency department and then dumped into the psychiatric hospital before they realised he wasn’t quite “the right fit” – eventually sending him here, where he’d supposedly do the least amount of damage. Or at least that was the logic.
You see, with Malta being Malta, it’s all about politics and bureaucracy. Meritocracy has no place here. Power, connections, and money are what matter. And this guy had all three.
Right from the very start, it became clear that everything we’d heard about him wasn’t just rumours or petty gossip. He constantly commented on Paula’s and Rosalie’s physical attributes. He’d insist they were hormonal or “on their period” whenever they took offence, and he’d get defensive the moment Dr Pops or I stood up for them. The list goes on – from flicking Paula’s ears repeatedly to passing his hands over Rosalie’s arse. He’d openly tell us about all the things he’d do to one “sexy” secretary and all the things he wouldn’t do to another “unsightly” one. He’d walk in on female doctors while they were changing. He’d brag about extramarital affairs with nurses. He even went as far as pulling up Rosalie’s chest X-ray just to comment on the outline of her breasts. Truly a walking scumbag.
That’s just the sexual harassment side of things. You don’t even wanna get me started on his medical knowledge. Whenever a nurse approached us with a concern, he’d snap at them, insisting the patients were fine and that they had no reason to complain. When Dr Pops pushed him to review patients properly, he’d often yell at him and call him a wuss – insubordination and consequences be damned. On the rare occasion he did review a patient, he’d come back declaring they were “fine”, only for them to deteriorate later that same day.
And his management plans? Jesus Christ. He prescribed antifungal creams for just about any dermatological issue. He used phenobarbitone as first-line treatment for seizures. He’d throw random antibiotic cocktails at anyone with a fever. And that was on the rare occasions he actually put in an effort.
Things quickly turned sour. Rosalie and Paula had started dreading coming to work because of him. That was when I spoke to Dr Pops and decided to take one for the team. For ward rounds, we split into two groups. I’d be on babysitting duty with Dr Sleazy.
At the beginning, it worked. I managed to keep him in check. When he said something inappropriate, I shut him down. When he suggested some half-baked plan, I countered with a safer, more sensible approach. At times, he’d even offer to help, but knowing how inept he was, I’d tell him to sit back and enjoy his break.
Only as time went by, things started to escalate again. The brief encounters he’d have with Paula and Rosalie would be fraught with all kinds of issues on his part.
And so, more formal complaints were filed. Meetings were held. Emails were sent. Lawyers were involved. Forms were filled in with painstaking detail, every incident documented, every witness named. We were thanked for “raising our concerns” and reassured that the matter would be “looked into.” And then… nothing. No updates. No outcomes. No consequences. Dr Sleazy kept showing up to work as if nothing had happened, protected by layers of procedure and silence. It became painfully clear that the system wasn’t broken – it was working exactly as designed.
That was my first real encounter with moral injury: the slow, corrosive realisation that doing the right thing doesn’t always matter, and that sometimes the institution you serve will ask you to carry its failures quietly, so it doesn’t have to.
While most of the staff were genuinely lovely people, there were a few other problematic characters. Like the resident who smelled like a walking sewer and seemed to have an endless list of court cases. Or the higher specialist trainee who barely did an ounce of work and took more sick leave than we could count. The nurses on this one ward who absolutely hated Paula and me on account of being too “smiley”.
Before long, I started to realise that this was probably the most toxic work environment I had ever experienced. Everyone seemed to be at odds with one another. Gossip ran rampant within the four walls of that hospital. Malpractice and negligence were daily topics of conversation. Instead of focusing on patient care, people were far more invested in whining about their jobs or tearing down their colleagues.
I don’t wanna sound like a martyr. On plenty of occasions, I found myself dragged into the very conversations I despised. But at risk of sounding like a pompous, arrogant brat with a superiority complex, it often felt like I was stooping to a level that made me deeply uncomfortable. “Small minds discuss people,” they say – an adage I’ve always given a lot of weight to. Instead of gossiping, we could’ve spent that time talking about medicine, politics, current affairs, or anything else that actually mattered.
But somehow, everyone seemed too alienated to do that. Time and time again, I found myself wondering how it had come to this. We were meant to be providing the best healthcare possible, yet what I was witnessing felt like the exact opposite.