WASHINGTON, D.C. – With nice patients finally placed on the endangered species list, conservationists have been tasked with trying increase the population of nice patients in health care. An innovative new program at D.C. Medical Center (DCMC) has placed 50 local nice patients into captive breeding.
According to the National Patient Service (NPS), captive breeding programs have been used since the 1960s but primarily with animal populations.
“We learned a lot from these captive breeding programs in zoos over the past few decades,” explained DCMC conservationist Dr. Alice Montague, hoping these animal captive breeding programs, like the one that helped restore the Arabian onyx in Oman, can be translated into a success story for the dwindling nice patient population. “It will take some time for sure, but our hope is if we can grow our population of 50 nice patients to maybe 500, we can then distribute these nice patients to other medical centers.”
Montague, her team, and the NPS are hoping that early success and increased exposure will both restore faith and optimism to our generally demoralized health care professionals, and spur other medical centers to start their own captive breeding programs.
Assuming they succeed, that will bring about a new set of challenges.
“At that point, the biggest challenge becomes teaching our nice patients basic survival skills in captivity before being released into the wild,” explained nice patient psychologist Devin Winters. “We have to teach them how to find food in supermarkets and restaurants, avoid predators like bears and solicitors, attract a nice mate to further species survival, and build or find adequate shelters, hopefully with reasonable rent or interest rates. Most importantly, we need to teach them how to remain nice.”
When asked how they felt about being bred in captivity in the hopes of preventing their extinction, the response from nice patients was universal: “Why sure, we’d only be too happy to help!” Gosh, how are these nice patients sooooo nice?!