Between The Sheets and Mental Disorders

"Sex between hospital workers goes on more often than the public might think -- in elevators, between doctors and medical residents."
"It doesn't just happen at the McGill University Health Centre, [Montreal superhospital] but in hospitals around the city."
Information source at MUHC

"In terms of salacious details, it doesn't get much more risque than the 29 percent of respondents who admitted to having enjoyed a tryst in the workplace -- mostly after hours, but not always."
Vault.com, U.S. career-information website survey

"It's not certain that an employee would be immediately suspended [for being interrupted in flagrante delicto]."
HR [human resources] looks at a range of things like an employee's years of service and work record."
"This hospital has 2.5-million square feet, so it's a big place and there are places that are quiet, especially at night."
"Obviously, this behaviour is not acceptable to the MUHC."
Ian Popple, MUHC official

"The liaison unfortunately took place [at an American hospital] in the hospital chapel on the altar, which had a TV camera trained on it all times so hospital patients could tune in to worship at will."
"A shriek from a little old lady trying to worship from her hospital bed -- and who promptly developed chest pain -- brought the affair between the doctor and nurse to light."
"The nurse in question was fired and the doctor, after a brief holiday, returned to work."
Dr. Maria Hugi, emergency-room physician/graduate University of British Columbia

Still from TV drama Grey's Anatomy

"When they are in love, everything is fine but often the relationship will turn sour at one point."
"If I'm in a precarious situation [sexual consent between subordinate and superior], am I consenting to sex because I feel like having it or because I'm worried about my job?"
"I don't want to sound like a moralist, but one can't condone this type of behaviour." 
Angelo Soares, professor of Human resources, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

The incident referred to at the MUHC revolved around two hospital workers sharing sex at the superhospital on an examination table. They were evidently in no hurry, and their schedule somehow permitted the presumably overworked and stressed pair to find relief in one another's arms. So much so that they fell asleep afterward, which is how and where they were discovered, and why and when the incident erupted as a scandal.

Evidently not because a doctor and a nurse had sex to relieve their tension, since from all accounts it isn't a rare occurrence, but as these things happen, because they got 'caught' with their pants down, so to speak, and became the shamed subjects of other peoples' speculation. Sex between co-workers does happen. And it seems to occur more often than most people would venture to imagine, if their imaginations ventured to dwell on such things.

But though it occurs surreptitiously and often, it is generally not spoken of openly, only in guarded whispers eliciting either condemnation or admiration, or something in between, leavened with a bit of spite. Or perhaps envy. From surveys it has been revealed that employees working in retail represent those most tempted to share romantic interludes with co-workers -- 62 percent admit to such goings on -- as compared to health-care professions at 47 percent.

Dr. Soares speaks of the outcomes of studies he has undertaken, related to burnout and psychological harassment in the workplace. He remarks that once an office romance peters out both of the people involved realize the discomfort of sharing a workplace with someone they may no longer wish to have anything to do with; a reminder of a relationship that looms as an error in judgement.

As far as Professor Soares is concerned, workplace sex is analogous in some ways to public sex. The big difference is that when a couple is known to have had sex together, they are known by their colleagues and much embarrassment and regret is certain to follow the shrunken reputation they both bear. And then there is the embarrassment and perhaps resentment felt by their colleagues related to their indiscretion to be considered.

Olivier and Anne-Sophie were stabbed to death in 2009. ((CBC))

Although what happened in Quebec when a heart surgeon, in mental turmoil after discovering that his physician-wife was having an affair with a personal friend of both who just also happened to be their personal physical trainer, is not quite the fallout of workplace colleagues sharing a romance, disrupting an unstable marriage, it isn't all that far removed from the formula.

Ivanoh Demers/Reuters   Guy Turcotte (left) with his two children Anne-Sophie, 3 and Olivier, 5, at a family birthday party

In the case of cardiologist Guy Turcotte who in 2009 stabbed his two children, Anne-Sophie, 3, and Olivier, 5, to death as an act of vengeance against his estranged wife Isabelle Gaston, a ten week trial during which the doctor's lawyer insisted he could not be held criminally responsible for murdering his children because of mental illness, a jury found the man not criminally responsible for his act due to a mental disorder.

Perhaps we all suffer transient mental disorders at critical times in our lives, or when we are overly stressed. Does that translate to our not being responsible for the consequences of our decisions leading to actions we may later wish to disown? Eventually the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that Dr. Turcotte should be tried again for the murders. Two counts of first-degree murder.