Table 9.

Illustrative participant quotes on negative interactions with other healthcare providers

…I ended up having … several bad experiences with the obstetrician who was on call… it just kind of put me over the edge and said, look, this is…I’m not enjoying this, I’m not having fun. I don’t want to get treated like I’m being treated. So, I’m not going to do this anymore. (Family Physician, man, NS)

…we ended up going to the operating room five times out of the seven deliveries for postpartum hemorrhage. Which is a crazy amount of time[s]. I don’t know why, it was just a really bad run. And [the obstetrician] basically … ended up being quite short with me… I felt like I was being treated … disrespectfully… I just said … I know that I’m new but I’m still a staff … He basically told me, “I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk [to] the nurses.” Which was a bit insulting. Like I said, I know I’m new but I’m still a staff physician. I have been trained. Telling me to get off the phone and put a nurse on is a little bit belittling. (Family Physician, man, NS)

… some of the people that I worked with… There was one attending specifically, he was just really, really intense and made me think, yeah, this is not for me. (Family Physician, woman, ON)

… during residency, we did do quite a lot… I probably did 3 or 4 months straight of obstetrics. But even in that experience, there was a lot of conflict with the allied health providers that made it a really kind of toxic atmosphere. So almost none of the residents wanted to do it… I think of our class of 22 residents, maybe only 3 or 4 are actually doing obstetrics because of that… it was not a very good learning environment. (Family Physician, woman, BC)