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Wednesday, May 13, 2015

nurse will not be dishonorably discharged for refusing to force feed prisoner


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/13/navy-will-not-punish-nurse-refusing-force-feed-guantanamo-prisoners

As a nurse veteran, this was an interesting article to read. Prisoners at Guantanamomo Bay have held hunger strikes for different reasons. I guess after a period of time, the military decided to force feed them.

They would be strapped into a chair and an NG tube would be inserted. Then they would be fed through the tube. Well, one nurse refused to do it. He faced discipline 8and a bad discharge, a loss of pension. He was no longer able to work as a nurse during the investigation. Those charges have been dropped. After all, how would it look if the navy dishonorably discharged a nurse for essentially torturing somebody.

I admire this nurses courage in a world gone crazy.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

*****BREAKING NEWS***** America's nurses burning out!

http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/why-americas-nurses-are-burning-out/

Wow!  Who'da thunk it? Those wussy nurses are again complaining about being tired and stressed out.  Of  course, they are again talking about "being short staffed". Blah blah blah. SSDD When are these whiners gonna quit?

Happy nurses week. May you enjoy whatever weird gift they come up with this year....

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

welcome to my world, won't you come in..

Go ahead. Click on the arrow. Its OK. You can trust me. You know that...OK did youdo it? Does it make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? 

Welcome to my world. At least once a shift someone is doing something similar to this. They are screaming so loud that it can be heard throughout the emergency department. Last
week it was someone who doesn't like white people screaming about their dislike, followed by yelling for their mother. Now mind you this is a grown adult. 



Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Nurses are not superheroes

Medicine is changing. Hospitals are changing. It has become about business, money. There is no choice in the matter. Its reality.

There is so much emphasis on patient care satisfaction. On standardization of everything across the corporation. More and more complex procedures and polciies are evolving. Lost in all of this is the nurse.

I really wonder if there are other jobs that change as rapidly as nursing. It is constant, overwhelming change. Change it is hard to keep up with. I've given up trying to keep up with it. I try to remember the important stuff and ignore the rest.

Nursing has become a complex job with increasing complex technology and procedures. Nurses handle patients with LVADs, ECMO, hypothermia treatment to name a few. People are being kept alive today that never would have had a chance even ten years ago. Who is keeping them alive? Nurses.

With the emphasis on patient satisfaction, we are expected to handle a diversity of patients with all their perisonality disorders and neuroses with a smile on our face. When it comes down to it, we are expected to be superhuman.

With all the rapid change, emphasis on the bottom line, patient satisfaction - no attention is given to employee satisfaction. We are just expected to grind it out and be happy about it. The thing that is missing in all of this change in medicine is the lack of caring about the employee. What all of these hospitals fail to understand is that if the employees aren't happy, the patients won't be happy. The lack of understanding of that will be their downfall.

Sunday, May 03, 2015

yes we have no condoms, we have no condoms today

 Highlight of the day in triage:



Man walks swiftly up to triage desk. Opens mouth to speak. I notice he only has one tooth on top.

One tooth guy:  Do you have a condom?

Me: no

One tooth guy: You don't have condoms here?

Me: no

He turns around and walks out.  He wasn't there to be seen. He just wanted a condom. Maybe I should have said: Yeah, we have condoms, but we only have size small.  Is that okay?

Hey, I'm evil, what can I say?

Friday, May 01, 2015

The 7 grossest things I have ever seen or heard of in the ER


I tried to come up with ten  of the grossest things I have seen or heard of in the ER, but alas I only came up with seven. Let's go from least grossiosity to most grossiosity, shall we?

7) Anything that anybody brings in that's in a jar or ziplock bag, including pee, poop, vomit or something that came out of one of your bodies orifices.  Also includes bugs or critters. One time a guy brought in "parasites" that were supposedly coming out of him and I think it turned out to be tofu.

6) Food or alcohol that comes out when we do gastric lavage for an overdose A gastric lavage is when we insert a large tube down into your stomach, pump water in and ent then take back out.  Fortunately we rarely do this anymore.  Why is it people eat a large meal before they overdose?  But alas, the smell of alcohol is the worst.

5) One time a guy came in with these two black growths on his forehead that looked like horns (gross). A brilliant (!) Doctor came in and decided to burn them off right in the ER.  So we had the smell of burning flesh all through the ER til that was done.

4) In the "another great human invention" area there is the scathingly brilliant idea of dipping a joint in embalming fluid, drying it and smoking it....actually had a guy that did that.

3) Once someone was getting undressed and a dead mouse fell out of their pants.

2) maggots.....'nuff said.

1) A person had been to Guatemala and while there ate undercooked pork. They got worms from it that had migrated to their brain.....and that folks is the grossest thing I have ever heard of.