PHYSICIAN ENJOYS HECTIC PACE OF EMERGENCY ROOM

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Nancy Weber-Bornstein seems to have a propensity for coming off as something other than a physician. Patients often mistake her for a nurse.

"I had one little old lady the other night who said I was a really sweet nurse," she said. "I said I took that as a compliment."

Weber-Bornstein, 35, has worked in Cape Girardeau as an emergency room physician at Southeast Missouri Hospital for the last two-and-one-half years. She's originally from Michigan, where she graduated from the University of Michigan's medical school.

She and her husband, Allan, moved from Boston, Mass., to Cape Girardeau after he got a job here as a botany professor at Southeast Missouri State University.

While in Boston, Weber-Bornstein went through her fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. For two years she also taught in the emergency medicine residency program at Boston City Hospital, a hospital for indigent patients.

Why patients mistake Weber-Bornstein for a nurse can be explained by a number of reasons. They include Weber-Bornstein herself, the nature of her job, and the patients themselves.

For one, she prefers wearing blue "scrubs" over her white physician's coat. The coat's too bulky, plus she feels it gives off a stuffy air. The practice, lacking as it does in embellishment, meshes naturally with Weber-Bornstein's conversational, engaging manner.

Secondly, she's a woman. People often assume that a woman dressed in scrubs in an emergency room setting is a nurse. In fact, Weber-Bornstein is only one of two female emergency room physicians in Cape Girardeau; the other works at St. Francis Medical Center.

Thirdly, although she tells patients right away that she's the physician, they don't usually hear it.

And lastly, because an emergency room physician sees a patient only a short period of time, and then assigns tasks to other emergency room workers, Weber-Bornstein thinks people don't realize they've been seen by a doctor.

Getting people to see her as a physician is not Weber-Bornstein's only challenge. The job in itself is a challenge, she said.

The emergency room, she said, seems to be the place where a physician can do critical care. But at the same time a lot of the patients who come through the emergency room aren't true medical emergencies.

"I guess that's what I find challenging. ... It's like you do clinic (work) most of the time and then once in a while you get someone who is critically ill," said Weber-Bornstein.

"I like taking care of really sick patients," she said, adding, on the other hand, she doesn't really care for it. "I guess it's the sort of thing: You like a little panic once in a while, but you really don't like a little panic."

Weber-Bornstein said one incident that sticks in her mind involved an abused child who was taken to Boston City Hospital. The 4-year-old girl had fallen three stories from a window, she said. Though crying, the child was fine, with no apparent serious injuries, she said.

She said the girl's grandfather told her a story that sounded fishy. He said the child had been sleeping and the next thing the grandfather knew she had fallen out the window.

Later the girl provided the apparent truth.

"The senior surgeon asked if she wanted to see her mommy, and she said, `No, she did it.' I mean you could of heard a pin drop in that room," Weber-Bornstein said.

An episode that took place in Cape Girardeau last May also sticks out in her mind, she said. A Southeast Missouri State University student suffered a head injury while he was intoxicated, she said. Although the injury wasn't serious, no one knew whether the student who was so drunk he was hardly breathing had been attacked or had just hit his head after passing out.

Weber-Bornstein said the student was injured after having taken advantage of a drink special at a tavern. The tavern had offered all the beer one could drink for $5, she said. She thought it ironic that the student had taken advantage of the special, only to wind up with between $1,000 to $3,000 in medical bills afterwards, she said.

"Five dollars that was a real deal. I'm glad nothing was seriously wrong with him. It was only a temporary thing, but I always have to laugh."