Always sniff the carcass before you say "yes".

Did you ever learn an important lesson from someone that has stayed with you for the rest of your life? I first met Farhad Sholevar in 1990. I had started working at Lehigh Valley Hospital after nearby Easton Hospital decided to close their psychiatric unit, putting me out of a job. LVH offered me a position as an Assistant Nurse Manager on their psychiatric unit.
Dr. Sholevar was one of the attending psychiatrists that I met when I started working there. He was born in Iran and had served in the Shah's army before finishing medical school and emigrating to the United States. He had completed a psychiatric residency and had moved to Allentown to open a practice.
LVH had three distinct psychiatric units (two adult and one adolescent) with a Medical Director for each who was salaried as a part-time employee. The attending psychiatrists were not employees, rather, they had "privileges" meaning they could admit and treat patients, and they made their money by billing the patients they treated. One of the attendings, who is still there, was famous for admitting and "treating" up to 40 patients between the 3 units (we had a total of 54 beds). You can imagine how much quality time he spent with each patient, but they loved him and he managed to rent an apartment in Paris every summer for a month to vacation with his family, and had over 2000 patients in his outpatient practice.
The attendings took turns being "on call" at night. They did not get paid to do so, but it was a requirement for them to take call as part of being credentialed to be on staff. The mental health statute in Pennsylvania was modified in the late 1980's to require that anyone involuntarily committed had to be admitted to a community hospital, rather than a State Hospital. This meant that hospitals having someone sitting in their Emergency Department who required psychiatric admission would need to do a creative job of "selling" the patient to another hospital's psychiatric unit. If a particularly challenging patient was sitting in our own ED, they oftentimes came to us because no one else would take them. It was not unknown for some especially undesirable patients to sit in EDs for several days before some hospital (sometimes quite far away) could be convinced to take them.
The title of this piece comes from a conversation I had with Dr. Sholevar when he was sharing with me his philosophy about screening referrals for admission when he was on call. I'm sure it had it's origins in Iran from his earlier days, but the idea behind it makes eminent sense. When one is faced with an important decision, it is always a good idea to ask questions, to "sniff the carcass" in case things just don't smell right. Sometimes you had to take the patient regardless, but you also sometimes could avoid a train wreck.
So, the next time you are contemplating buying a house or car, moving, taking a new job, getting married, or anything else that's important, don't forget to sniff the carcass first.