January 15th, 2008
General Hospital…
Nurses have to ask the strangest questions. We arrived at the hospital a few minutes past midnight and were shown into a room, whereupon our nurse literally went through 4 pages of such questions. Standard protocol, no doubt – but annoying? Hell yes.
-Krishna
P.S. Some of the archived toons will appear to have a large left and right border of white around them. No need to get alarmed. Effective immediately, I’ve standardized the size of the comic to a width of 1000 pixels, to match The PC Weenies. This will give the art much more ‘breathing room’ than before.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Who’s Bruno?
January 17th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Sad thing is, a lot of questions and a lot of things we do are less for the benefit of the patient and more for the benefit of lawyers Actually, there is a method to our madness, tho I will admit I am just as annoyed when I’m on the receiving end. When I got started in nursing )way back before God was born), it took about 20 minutes to do an admission: including paperwork I did at the nurses station. Now it takes HOURS, and we have admission nurses who do nothing but admit patients so the regular nurses can actually do some patient care.
I teach OB nursing: I’m going to have to share some of the Uncubed strips with my students. It’ll be a nice diversion for them
January 18th, 2008 at 4:23 am
As annoying as it can be, more often than naught, it does end up saving lives!
Take this case for example:
A former junkie gets a tattoo from an “unsterile artiste”, during her teens; gets a gift of Hep-B or Hep-C in the process! The infection remains dormant for the next 10 years or so! All this while the lady has matured into a “responsible” woman, who has all but forgotten that she ever got a tattoo, conceives a child and comes into the OBGYN for the first time in labor!
She has no idea that she is infected for she has never had any symptom whatsoever to say the least!
Now given that the rate of transmission of HBV and HCV is the highest peripartum, the ideal course would be a C-Section to minimize the same!
Now this small info given to the resident OBGYN or the nurse that she had a tattoo, gives an impetus for them to do a viral marker profile and prepare for a C-Section if required!
So as nauseating as it gets for the patient at the receiving end, it ends up saving lives!
Being an experienced nursing instructor, I guess it’s odd that you, of all the people, should feel this way!
And way back, let us just take it as far as the late 70′a or early 80’s, there were no rapid tests to detect the constellation of diseases that are in vogue now! So I believe, a good patient history has more to do that just lawyers!
January 18th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Sorry for the typo’. Read the last line as:
A good patient history has more to do with optimizing patient care than just avoiding the lawyers!
February 18th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Haha, this one is funny.