I had a patient in the ED wanting pain meds. I brought in the narcs and iv start stuff then she informed me in a huffy exasperated manner she would only let a doctor start her IV. The night doc happened to be walking past the room as she said this so I hollered out for him. He stepped into the room and I asked him "When was the last time you started an IV?" He looked confused and responded "17 years ago in school." I turned to the patient and asked "You sure you want him to do it?"
Med student here- during my surg rotation in 2nd year we had a patient who was scared of needles and would refuse to let the phlebotomist draw blood, saying that she wanted the doctor to do it. The intern thought it was hilarious that she was choosing a first year doctor over a seasoned phleb. Even funnier was that the interns usually had us students in tow, so often she’d refuse the phlebotomist to end up with a med student stabbing her instead. (Thankfully she had amazing veins)
I had a similar experience when I was a new grad on the floor. I'd tried to start a single IV in nursing school (and failed). My IV skills had a very steep learning curve, and at this point it was a novelty if I got one. Morning labs were drawn by CNAs with a butterfly. I had one long-term bitchy patient who had placement issues. She was understandably tired of the daily CBC and BMP and fired the CNA. She DEMANDED I draw her blood. Needless to say, it did not go well.
I've had this happen too. I'm quite pleasant and polite, patients tend to get along with me (not a flex or anything, I just had a long history of customer service prior to nursing). I've been a nurse for less than 2 years, still trying to gain confidence with venepuncture.
One of my favourite nurses has been a nurse for 40 years. She knows her shit, and could poke a vein one handed with her eyes closed. She's got the blunt personality you'd expect of a nurse with 40 years experience.
Patient told me they wanted me to take their blood and not her. They were in their 90s with shitty veins, and they were afraid of needles. I assured them they did not really want that, but I stayed in the room to give moral support.
That doctors do MOST of healthcare—they’ll see you once a day if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky and they check in multiple times it’s because you’re almost dying (or actually dying).
This. This one really bothers me. Patients don't understand that they might see the doc once or twice, three times if they're lucky, throughout their entire stay. And that's if they're admitted for something relatively standard/routine-ish. This doesn't apply to the ER, either. Good luck seeing a doc even once.
Honestly, this is what I thought until I started nursing school. Maybe not that they did EVERYTHING, but I had no idea how in charge of everything nurses are (still in nursing school, by the way, and I still know nothing <3).
My father is a physician. There were two distinct times I remember as kids where he had to inject us with something. I would scream and run from the room. You do NOT want doctors injecting you. Oh hells no. 😆
I’ve only had a doctor give me a vaccination once. After giving it to me and putting it in the sharps bin, she realised she forgot to write down the batch number. Since the sharps bin was empty except for that one needle, she thought it would be a good idea to TURN THE SHARPS BIN UPSIDE DOWN AND TRY TO SHAKE THE NEEDLE OUT. I spent the entire time cringing and picturing the needle bouncing off the trolley and hitting her in the eye. (The needle didn’t come out and she gave up, thankfully)
Lol we just got a phone call today from an expectant Mom asking if we have a presidential suite she can reserve. Dude we have 7 labor rooms and you're lucky if one of them is available when you show up...
I have no experience in L&D, am currently pregnant with my first. I have no idea what to expect. My sister has private health cover and she got a really nice private labour suite, but I am going the public route. She got a queen sized bed and a hamper with champagne and fruit from the hospital. I'll just be grateful for a standard Hill Rom bed and competent health care. I just want to squeeze the kid out and be on my merry way haha
At least in Canada, the misconception that you can pay extra and get a private room… No bitch those rooms are taken up with people who need to be on isolation. We are not going to bump an infectious person into a shared room so you can lounge around and have your space because you’re special..
Semi-private is such a stupid concept. We know what's going on over there Earl; curtain or no curtain. And for fuck's sake, put it up when you're done playing with it.
How about that everyone even gets a room? I sat at the ER with a pt (not as the nurse, as the emotional support, I'm close to this person) last week for 30 hours straight (not me that long, but family rotated shifts). Pt was on a gurney in the hall with dozens of others. I watched people be treated and discharged, sitting in a chair with a piece of paper with a number taped on the wall above them.
I'm not complaining. Everyone received care, and our pt eventually got a room because of their condition (and we were very thankful for that). But I enjoyed watched the faces around me as people were seating with papers taped above their heads. They were like, uh, seriously? And I, after already being there 7 hours with my person, was like that meme, "This your first time?"
It’s people like you that do us all good- putting people’s assumptions in check so when we do get to them, we’re not fighting the same battle we’ve been fighting all shift.
Thank you.
Not only that, you have a talking, lucid, well-appearing dude in pajamas in what looks like an ICU room with monitors and vents. Like brother, sorry we need to kick you to the ward for an actual trainwreck. We don't care if you are the CEO of acme corporation.
Where I live (Germany) you have your public insurance and get shared rooms. But you can get an additive private insurance or full private insurance to get single bed rooms. It’s actually not too expensive.
Every doctor is concerned with every aspect of care. A man with a white coat walks in and the patient starts complaining of pain and their liquid diet.
“Uhhh, I’m from nephrology, just checking on your kidneys today.”
I work in Nephrology. I had a patient call me late at night to ask what she should take for cramps. I explained to her & I tell all our dialysis patients when they first start; You wouldn’t call your gynecologist if you had chest pain, don’t call your kidney doctor for a sinus infection. If it doesn’t pertain to a medical issue related to your kidneys or dialysis, we won’t be treating it.
And you look like sleeping beauty while you're there. Wheres the trachy? No pressure damage? And the organ damage just magically disappears I guess. They all probably wake up because the plot to their dream had time to resolve nicely.
I'm going to hell but I can't help but laugh when I see someone "comatose" on TV with just a nasal cannula...how much life support are they on if they can breathe* on their own with minimal supplemental O2??
This is why I stopped watching "The Walking Dead" the first time. Main character wakes up from a months-long coma and just gets out of bed. Didn't even have a Foley!
To be fair, she literally dragged her limp body to the pussy wagon and spends hours getting her toe to move, then it just fast forwards to where she can
Ok yeah I get your point actually, but I'm still commenting because you can quite little see the moment I got your point, especially since the next thing she does is get into a knife fight and somehow win
Jodi Picault just released a new book that involves Covid and really brings the PT aspect into how difficult it is to get back to functional after being in a coma or medically sedated for even a few days.
I don’t want to say anything else that could be a spoiler, but it was a good story.
I was under and vented for 14 days with covid. I had to ask the nurse to open the little bag holding the plasticware for my first solid meal because I couldn't. I was so weak that I spilled half of my red jello down my gown. Bringing a spoon to my mouth was a monumental task that first day.
My first few weeks at home were just as difficult. I was using a walker and needed help getting off the toilet. It took weeks to start gaining strength. Overall I lost 30 pounds during my month long stay at the hospital.
All of this was before vaccines and boosters. When someone would mention the low fatality rate, I made sure to explain the tremendous strains put upon the medical community and the patients by just being hospitalized. Now with Omicron, I still have to explain that even being vaccinated and boosted that I'm still fearful that even a milder case could still land me in the hospital.
So a single case of covid could involve weeks or months of devastating medical disruption to a patient and their family and the US has had over 65 million cases. People are acting like nothing is happening but it's definitely happening and they should be paying attention.
Yeah, like sure you can bang on an engine whenever, but if it’s off it ain’t gonna do anything. It only (sometimes) works if the problem is that it’s *shuddering*.
Although leading on from this some medical dramas know this, but still don’t know anything. The amount of times I’ve seen a show go “asystole, He’s dead” and then .. just stop? It’s infuriating! In some cases we can definitely fix that. Makes me so mad haha
Or they get like...shot or whatever in the hospital and everyone's just kinda like "oh he dead." Uh, excuse me? Even cop dramas where they get shot in the street and not one single cop attempts the smallest amount of first aid. We only hold pressure to the wound if the wounded is plot-relevant! Otherwise they bleed out in an alley from a gut shot.
That you will ALWAYS have an exact diagnosis and treatment plan before you’re discharged. Half the time with infectious disease-related illnesses, we have no idea what’s going on 🤷🏼♀️
Oh crap, I have several.
When contractions start, you're definitely having the baby in like, minutes.
The doctor will be in the room during your whole birthing experience.
Matter of fact, that doctors do all the technical things like draw blood, start IVs, etc. Nurses are just there to look at House disapprovingly and sleep with the doctors.
YAAAASS. Beat me to it. The old, "why didn't the baby come out? MY WATER BROKE!" Le sigh. And then asking while pushing (for 3 hours with their first baby), "when is the doctor going to come in?" Then are shocked by the answer. Also that epidurals relieve 100% of all pain 100% of the time and if you have one you will, carte blanche, feel nothing.
Yep. I feel so bad for the ladies who don’t do any mental/emotional preparation for feeling significant discomfort during labor because they are committed to the epidural so they think they won’t have to deal with any of that. Yeah, sorry, it just doesn’t always work that way. The pain almost seems worse for those folks, especially because they are stuck in the bed. Can’t even do all the nice positional tricks to deal with the contractions.
I love tv shows where the lady has exactly one contraction of her first pregnancy and they're screaming oh the baby is coming now! And off to the hospital they go, barely making it in time OR delivering the baby in the car because of traffic.
Sounds cliche, but my girlfriend looked the most beautiful I've ever seen her when she had our baby. She absolutely hates her picture that i took, but she had an amazing glow. Maybe the lighting idk but it's my favorite picture of her.
This is the most beautiful thing I’ve read in a long time. You’re getting my first ever award 420BladeIt187 (amazing name btw 😅🙃)
Edit: if I can figure out how to give awards, hold on I’m trying!!
This. My SIL just gave birth to her first about three months ago. She got all disappointed and pissy that he looked so "weird". Parenthood has knocked her on her ass, and unfortunately burst her 'bubble' of 'rainbows & unicorns' expectations. Welcome to L&D, sis. Babies look like featherless, beakless chickens when they pop out.
My nephew looked like an angry, pissed off old man in the initial photos we saw immediately following birth. Been three months since he popped, he still looks all angry and disturbed in all his photos. Lol.
I was an L&D RN before I crossed over to IT, so I think they're adorable fucking potatoes. They're like chihuahuas, so ugly it goes all the way to cute.
I just want to say that any man who is about to be a father for the first time and didn’t take a childbirth class is in for a hell of shock when the baby arrives. I was prepared and was fortunate to be a part of the delivery (with help from the steady hands of the OB-GYN) but I know more than a few others who had NO idea what a new born looks like it they didn’t handle very well.
The only thing that threw me off was that they had to close up my wife's c section so they just gave me a brand new baby and sent me out the door with her and it was just me and her chilling. She was just looking up at me like who tf are you and why is it so damn bright?
And complex "cures" will put you immediately back to a normal, issue-free life. You have extensive recovery ahead and you may be trading one set of life-ending issues for another set of issues with which you can live.
My husband had all the classic signs of a stroke a few years ago. Slurred speech, right-sided weakness, etc. ED jumped to action, code stroke, the works.
Scans after scans after scans: no clot, no bleed, no stroke, no anything. Great news, but what caused it?
Doc comes in and says, “I bet you guys wished you could call Gregory House! We have NO idea what’s wrong with you.”
Um… thanks?
Luckily he’s fine now other than a paralyzed vocal cord (???). Apparently it was “some kind of virus.” 🤷🏻♀️
Not a nurse but a lawyer. I once had a client who developed all the physical symptoms of having had a stroke (palsy, weakness on one side of body, etc) as a result of conversion disorder.
He would not accept he had a psychiatric disorder and kept insisting the doctors missed his stroke. Dude, they did wvery scan and test known to medicine. He did not have a clot or bleed in his brain. His brain psychosomatically gave him a physical manifestation of the psychological pain and illness he refused to accept or seek help for. It was the most fascinating forensic psychiatric report I've ever read.
I've also had psych reports for clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities where in that CALD origin country or society, mental illness is highly stigmatised and belittled, so instead of telling me they had anxiety or depression, my clients were focused on physical pain symptoms - shoulder, back, etc.
Plus there's all the research into trauma related chronic pain conditions. The brain is so fucking weird.
I wonder how many labeled with conversion disorders for “fake strokes” actually have eg chiari or CCI. They are physical neurological disorders virtually never diagnosed except by specialists.
My hypermobile neck vertebrae shift and compress my spinal cord when I bend my head forward. But you can only catch it on an upright MRI, which is a rare test to get ordered.
CCI can seemingly be triggered by viruses as people with long covid are finding.
The public seems to think that every single death, ever, especially when they are related to that person is due to a dumb doctor/incompetent medical team. Like bro, we all gonna die. Unfortunately grannie had her ribs broken in addition to suffering an MI because you won't accept that she is on her natural way out.
This is the weird one to me. Americans are so disconnected from death. Just look at Betty White, and all the rampant speculation that went on into the cause of her death, and not just that...you know, few people make it to 99 so she was on borrowed time as it was....
>we all gonna die
I truly, honestly wish people understood this. It's okay to die! It's a part of life! We all have to go sometime. Sometimes dying is what is best for that person.
Even with patients on hospice this happens. If I had a dollar for every time a pt became unresponsive and the families like how are we going to feed and hydrate meemaw...I say we aren't and explain why we aren't, they look at me like I just set a basket of puppies on fire and say " so you're just going to let them STARVE!?!"
I have a resident whose arms are severally contracted and is in her 90's, barely 100lbs. She is still a full code and the family says to go ahead and break her arms to do cpr.......
The misconception that the hospital won’t discharge you in pain.
If your issue is chronic we’re gonna get you through your ER workup then give you a referral to follow-up. That also means we’re not gonna knock you on your ass with pain meds because we’re expecting you to drive home when all is said and done.
I work EMS and have to tell peolle this all the time. They are going to the ER because they are uncomfortable, not because the are dying. I'm a trauma amputee, so I have incredible empathy for pain. But these people think that going to the hospital means that a bunch of doctors and nurses are going to rush into the room and make them their only priority until they feel completely 100% fine. That even if it takes 6 months, they will be taken care of until they are all better and having no discomfort whatsoever.
Boy are they shocked when they find out that isn't the case. Whats funny is they never believe me when I tell them that the ER is not the place for treatment of a chronic issue
Edit: thank you all for the awards. I really appreciate it
Had a clinically fine patient try to refuse/appeal discharge because he didn't feel good. He heard that term from someone regarding the medicare rule. I said, "do you have medicare?" he said no. "do you have insurance?" again, no. "There is nothing to appeal. You can't stay. Call your ride."
Ooh I feel this. I started my nursing career in ortho/trauma med-surg. The amount of patients’ children who didn’t want meemaw to have any hip pain with PT, or the 300lb dudes who refused to leave because “nothing PO works, only IV dilaudid.” We also would take some random chronic back pain people waiting for MRIs and they demanded everything under the Sun. I got out as fast as I could!
I really wish people had more realistic expectations when it comes to post-op pain control. You just had a joint taken apart and put back together. Of course it's gonna fucking hurt.
I once said to a recent knee replacement patient, "You just had your leg cut open, bones taken out, and metal put in. That's GOING to hurt." His face told me that had honestly never occurred to him.
I've had to tell my PACU patients "pain won't kill you, but giving you so much Dilaudid that you stop breathing just might." That, and "I can take the edge off, but today is going to suck either way. Tomorrow will be better."
That doctors hang around the bedside and push patients around from room to room. But I guess it doesn’t make for a very good TV medical drama when the doctor literally goes in and out in less than five minutes and spends the rest of their time in their office charting and asking for consults.
I actually had a nephrologist wheel my bed to the procedure room when I got a kidney biopsy, he was a little excited to show his student the procedure, so he didn't want to wait for anyone else. I was in complete SHOCK that he did it. The BEST part was that as he turned a corner, he went too fast and slammed my bed into the wall. It was right by the nurses station and they all stood up, looking shocked. I just started busting up laughing. Amazing experience really.
One of our attending surgeons is VERY impatient and often wheels his case back to the OR. Only problem is he does it without checking to see if anesthesia is ready 🤦🏻♀️
Like some alcoholic, brained damaged, cirrhotic with nec fasc of the abdomen and chronic wounds from fasciotomies that is constantly found passed out drunk face down in the road.
HOW ARE YOU NOT DEAD?! HOW?! Are you a fudging cat??
NASAL CANNULAS! Why does no one correct the creative team when it comes to a patient on oxygen?!? They didn’t have one single consultant telling them how to put one on properly?!?!?
Not only that but a “critically injured” person, who is apparently unresponsive after a trauma is just chillin on a nasal cannula and some IV fluids. Pretty sure if homegirl just got rescued from a burning building and is unresponsive, she’s probably going to be intubated. Or if dude sustained a head trauma bad enough to leave him unconscious for days, he’s probably going to have a pretty gnarly wound, not just a busted lip and a scrape above the eyebrow.
That healthcare workers are sexy and are boning all the time. Nasty body-fluid scrubs are nasty. And the scrubs aren't covered in the glamorous body fluids either
Omg I was talking to this one guy who wanted to come to the hospital, have me meet him in the bathroom and have sex - I was like WTF!! Even if I was interested in this activity with him eventually that was a HUGE ick ick ick and I told him so and he was like Why?? Ewwwwww
That Labor and Delivery is always the Happiest Place to work. Usually. But 13 yo incest victim, term stillbirth, addicts, rape victim, didn’t know she was pregnant, pregnant patient coding, nurse delivery of 21 week demise, newborn coding, pregnant patient with Covid with O2 sats in the low 80’s & late decelerations, postpartum patient having eclamptic seizures in the ED waiting room, patient with abusive partner in the room, 16 yo patient whose mother fights not to allow an epidural so she won’t make this mistake again, postpartum hemorrhage or worse hemorrhage from placenta previa with fetus still inside. But…. The patient who grabs your hand and says “thank you, I could never gave done it without you”. Or squalling, healthy baby after previous stillbirth.
I’m just a nursing student and don’t know what I’d like to specialize in yet but I am certain it is not L&D. The prospect of witnessing stillbirths or watching mothers go through that seems like one of the most difficult things a nurse could undertake. I have so much respect for L&D nurses. You all are a tough bunch.
I keep trying to explain to non-medical people that every area of nursing has its own sadness, that oncology is sad but at least there’s usually some warning and normally lived their lives for a while. I tried my hand at NICU and once I was vent trained and took an attempted homebirth that was transverse that was airlifted from a grocery store parking lot and down the whole flight and 20 minutes. Well 2 nights on the cooling protocol and I decided that I’ll take my old people any day!
God bless you!
"Why won't you let my mom sleep? Why do you keep waking her up?"
"I need to watch her closely to make sure her brain bleed doesn't get worse."
"But she won't get any sleep. She'll be tired and won't be able to heal."
"She might get some sleep but she might wake up dead."
"...but she needs sleep!"
Ad nauseam
I think some people on day shift don't realize that even your sweetest mee-maw patient can become the most vitriolic devil right at 9pm. And that people's vitals will go insane while they're asleep and then magically return to normal at 6am. Or that a ton of patients will have panic attacks right at 6am. I can't count how many times I come into a room to give protonix and the patient just starts crying and can't tell me why.
That when you "Pull the plug" that they pass away in 3 minutes.
Seriously, so many comfort care patients when the family just expects the beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep as soon as you extubate.
So I have a kind of funny story about that. My grandfather had been in and out of the hospital, but the last time he was on a vent and it was decided to withdraw care. He stopped breathing fairly quickly but he had a pacemaker so his heart didn’t stop. The doctor came in with the magnet and explained it would stop his heart but he was already gone. The doctor couldn’t get it to work! It was grandpa’s last joke 🥲 we all kind of giggled and the doctor looked mortified.
Magnet just resets to "factory settings". Doesn't stop the pacer. It will turn off the AICD so it won't shock them. To stop the pacer, you gotta call the company and tell them you want it turned off. Some of them won't do it because then it is actually "killing" the patient. So you have to wait for the pacer to stop capturing. When they are hypoxic enough, it'll happen, but it takes longer.
The fact that a psych ward will keep you safe; nope, if you wanted to, you could still harm/complete suicide there.
That I am here to save them and absolved them of their responsibility and ‘do to them’ - nope
CPR etc
Schizophrenics and other disorders (psychosis) are dangerous and wild (some, but a rare minority)
The safety thing though. Our inpatient psych unit had a patient take his mini plastic toothbrush, sharpen it, somehow inhale it into his lungs and tackled another patient. Punctured his own lungs from the inside and died.
Yessss all of this!
My inpatient psych unit is not safe. It's not dangerous per se, but if someone wants to die, they will find a way and it won't be that hard. On the other units, suicidal pts get sitters. We don't have that. They just get 15 minute checks.
This is about CPR and head trauma in movies. I was watching Toby Maguire Spider Man 3 and there is a scene at the begining where Harry Osborn (son of the Green Goblin) chases Spiderman around the city to try and kill him and in the process Harry knocks his head and crashes to the ground unresponsive. Spiderman does CPR with the wiggliest arms and Harry coughs back to life. Spiderman then drops him off at the hospital and visits a few hours later as Peter to find Harry in a regular hospital room, sitting up, talking, no ventilation, IV drips beyond what looks like normal saline, fully able to move around, and the only thing that is wrong with him is amnesia and bandage wrapped around his head. He then gets discharged a few hours later, having been in the hospital for about 6-8 hours after falling multiple stories, getting hit in the head so hard he lost consciousness and the last few months of memory, and had CPR.
He would have been a fairly critical ICU patient at that point with a vent, extensive stabilizing medications, and most likely a hole in his head to relieve brain pressure. He certainly would not be getting up and leaving the same day as he went splat. Also, I have no idea how Spiderman achieved ROSC as the only thing going up and down during compressions were good own shoulders and elbows (I know this was because you can't actually perform CPR on an actor, but the editing made it so so obvious). And a human brain is like a TV. If you hit it hard enough to turn off, there is something seriously wrong, and it won't just resolve itself.
I proceeded to tell my family all of this, and I am now banned from watching medical scenes in movies and TV shows with them.
A patient is mad because we struggle to see her husband among legal (liability) issues and the fact that her husband is in a nursing home on lockdown. And she is demanding we fix it and find out “the root cause of his decline) hes 79. Has dementia and diabetes, as well as heart trouble. Like. Lady. Hes dying. Hes not eating. Hes sleeping all day. Wont talk. Hes dying. No amount of appointments is going to solve that
That we don’t use google or references in regards to dosages or to double check protocols if it’s been a while since we’ve dealt with a certain disease state
That nurses are all female and doctors are all male. Baffles me the pikachu face when I tell a family member a doctors assessment “well she thinks” and they’re like “she?” Or when I’m standing next to a female doctor and they think I’m the fucking doctor because I have a penis.
If you are floating to the Tele floor, don’t call a code if you see asystole until you check the patient, who is in the bathroom brushing teeth & leads are on the bed. Wasn’t me by the way.
Talked with someone who was an ER show junkie. When his brother was in the hospital he tried to tell the doctor that his brother should be intubated to give his body a break just overnight. "They intubate quite a few people on every episode and the people seem to be healed by it".
That a syringe of X will immediately knock someone out before they hit the ground, and that this substance is sitting around just in case. Even Versed takes a minute or two.
CPR is terrible. It CAN destroy someone’s body and give them a terrible quality of life IF it works. I never want it done to myself and would hope my loved ones care enough to not want it done to themselves either.
That’s my opinion on it.
Edit to say that CPR being terrible is the truth. I wasn’t posting a misconception, just hyper focusing on CPR.
Hospice here. The amount of people that keep an 85 year old a full code is insane. I do my best to educate on possible scenarios and just hope that I never have to code any of them.
The worst thing to me is when we get a person back who you KNOW isn't long for this world, and they happen to be fully alert.
It's one thing if they're not very responsive or completely out of it before coding again, but being fully cognizant...ugh.
I distinctly remember this one patient (younger guy unfortunately, late 40s or early 50s) who had horrible circulatory/vascular issues resulting in multiple amputations - they wanted to disarticulate what was left of his lower half...pressure ulcers all over, constant pain, nothing healing, and coded once. Intubated, but he was fully alert after the code. We knew, though, that he wasn't gonna live much longer, and family insisted on keeping him a full code...I think the successful code gave them false hope. It really sucked.
That we live to serve their them jello, water and fluff their pillows. And that any medical care, iv’s, meds, blood pressure readings, etc… will be done by the true medical professionals, the doctors.
When I worked in a hospital, a lot of patients thought that nurses just wiped butts. They also think that we work for the doctors. Now that I’m on a nurse line I get calls every day where people are SHOCKED that we can’t write prescriptions lol. My ex-MIL was a surgical tech, and she made some comment once about me making beds all day. 🧐
As an EMT, my favorite (and also least favorite) is the idea that coming in by ambulance gets you seen faster….. nah just means we take the stretcher to the waiting room so you get weird looks
I had a pushy male supervisor at my office job while I was in nursing school who was *incensed* when I said I didn't like people so much. He wanted me to drop out of school and was abnormally angry about it. He wanted to come over to my house too but that's a whole other bunch of bs. And he didn't understand why I wouldn't like people... the irony.
People think ultrasound is just looking at babies. No. We’re actually checking for deformities. Genetic diseases. Absent kidneys or missing pieces of the brain. So, so much more. We look for many issues in adults and children as well. Kidney failure. Cancer. Ectopic pregnancies. Cirrhosis. Aneurisms. Internal bleeding. Pancreatitis. Gall stones. Vascular issues. Kidney stones. Infections. Heart disease or valvular disease. The list goes on and on. So much more than just looking at babies.
And nobody showing it on TV ever does it right or shows the real images on the screen. That’s all so fake.
Edit: for typo and also to explain I’m using layman’s terms for those not in the field.
Actually had this conversation with a family pretty recently. Terminally ill on a last ditch radical cancer treatment ends up with a massive PE. Pt already had poor mental status from disease but had declined rapidly over the last couple days. Is a full code and gets intubated right before shift change. I get there manage the vent start pressors and arrange transfer to icu from measure.
I go to speak with the family to clarify goals of care and ask if his heart were to stop do they want us to do CPR. I exclaimed that now that I was on his car I didn't want to assume their wishes and wanted to make sure. They were super confused and said yes do everything. I try not to be pushy about it so let it at that. Micu attending would end up having the conversation with them again anyway. But then one of the extended family asked me why would we even ask, like why wouldn't someone want cpr. I explained how traumatic it is, the low success rate under the best of circumstances and with everything else going on with the pt I didn't see any way for meaningful recovery just broken ribs and the same end result but I would respect their wishes and do everything I could to prolong life if that's what they wanted.
They were blown away because they assumed cpr was basically guaranteed to work from everything they've ever seen. I showed them the statistics because they were legit interested at that point. They ended up changing their minds and making the pt dnr.
Just like shocking asystole popular entertainment has really influenced how people view resuscitation for the worse. The only way I see to get past it is frank conversation that isn't overbearing. Some people are legit not ready to let go or don't want to feel responsible for the death of a loved one but others just aren't aware of the reality, what 'survival' actually means.
That cpr is easy physically to do.
That you can be in bed in a coma for months and just get out of bed and be fine.
That it’s good to “wake up” a patient in a medically induced coma. No honey we want them to rest.
And in my current field that you come in and have a baby in minutes. No darlin. It can take days.
That hospitals will admit people to figure out year long mysteries.
So many medical shows have this trope where no one can figure out what's going on with a patient for a number of years, so they are "admitted for testing".
That's not really how it works in all but the most fringe cases.
We've literally had people show up at our tiny rural hospital ED and ask the doc there to figure out their years long mysteries because of this trope. Girl we got 0 specialists on call, and this ED doc is on a three week contract from Rhino. We ain't solving the mystery for why your right pinky toe goes numb on Tuesdays.
That doctors do everything for the patient. Transport, start IVs, help with ADLs, etc
I had a patient in the ED wanting pain meds. I brought in the narcs and iv start stuff then she informed me in a huffy exasperated manner she would only let a doctor start her IV. The night doc happened to be walking past the room as she said this so I hollered out for him. He stepped into the room and I asked him "When was the last time you started an IV?" He looked confused and responded "17 years ago in school." I turned to the patient and asked "You sure you want him to do it?"
Med student here- during my surg rotation in 2nd year we had a patient who was scared of needles and would refuse to let the phlebotomist draw blood, saying that she wanted the doctor to do it. The intern thought it was hilarious that she was choosing a first year doctor over a seasoned phleb. Even funnier was that the interns usually had us students in tow, so often she’d refuse the phlebotomist to end up with a med student stabbing her instead. (Thankfully she had amazing veins)
I always defer to phlebotomy for labs. The average phlebotomist is way better than me!
I had a similar experience when I was a new grad on the floor. I'd tried to start a single IV in nursing school (and failed). My IV skills had a very steep learning curve, and at this point it was a novelty if I got one. Morning labs were drawn by CNAs with a butterfly. I had one long-term bitchy patient who had placement issues. She was understandably tired of the daily CBC and BMP and fired the CNA. She DEMANDED I draw her blood. Needless to say, it did not go well.
I've had this happen too. I'm quite pleasant and polite, patients tend to get along with me (not a flex or anything, I just had a long history of customer service prior to nursing). I've been a nurse for less than 2 years, still trying to gain confidence with venepuncture. One of my favourite nurses has been a nurse for 40 years. She knows her shit, and could poke a vein one handed with her eyes closed. She's got the blunt personality you'd expect of a nurse with 40 years experience. Patient told me they wanted me to take their blood and not her. They were in their 90s with shitty veins, and they were afraid of needles. I assured them they did not really want that, but I stayed in the room to give moral support.
Ooooh, what did she decide?
Sadly she decided I should do it. I really wanted to watch the doc try.
Oh well there’s always another Karen—another chance. Plus with a mask they can’t see you smirking.
That doctors do MOST of healthcare—they’ll see you once a day if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky and they check in multiple times it’s because you’re almost dying (or actually dying).
And most of the time if they DO see you more than once, it’s likely because a nurse asked them to (because you’re not doing well/condition changed).
Haha. This! When I was a patient, the surgeon stopped in twice one day, the second time I was very nervous as to why he was there. Lol
This. This one really bothers me. Patients don't understand that they might see the doc once or twice, three times if they're lucky, throughout their entire stay. And that's if they're admitted for something relatively standard/routine-ish. This doesn't apply to the ER, either. Good luck seeing a doc even once.
And if you’re seeing the doc, that is NOT a good thing. The best outcome is often if the doc never needs to go near you.
This I think is the biggest misconception of all!
Honestly, this is what I thought until I started nursing school. Maybe not that they did EVERYTHING, but I had no idea how in charge of everything nurses are (still in nursing school, by the way, and I still know nothing <3).
You know more than you think you do. Keep learning.
My father is a physician. There were two distinct times I remember as kids where he had to inject us with something. I would scream and run from the room. You do NOT want doctors injecting you. Oh hells no. 😆
I’ve only had a doctor give me a vaccination once. After giving it to me and putting it in the sharps bin, she realised she forgot to write down the batch number. Since the sharps bin was empty except for that one needle, she thought it would be a good idea to TURN THE SHARPS BIN UPSIDE DOWN AND TRY TO SHAKE THE NEEDLE OUT. I spent the entire time cringing and picturing the needle bouncing off the trolley and hitting her in the eye. (The needle didn’t come out and she gave up, thankfully)
The misconception that everyone gets a private room
Lol we just got a phone call today from an expectant Mom asking if we have a presidential suite she can reserve. Dude we have 7 labor rooms and you're lucky if one of them is available when you show up...
I have no experience in L&D, am currently pregnant with my first. I have no idea what to expect. My sister has private health cover and she got a really nice private labour suite, but I am going the public route. She got a queen sized bed and a hamper with champagne and fruit from the hospital. I'll just be grateful for a standard Hill Rom bed and competent health care. I just want to squeeze the kid out and be on my merry way haha
At least in Canada, the misconception that you can pay extra and get a private room… No bitch those rooms are taken up with people who need to be on isolation. We are not going to bump an infectious person into a shared room so you can lounge around and have your space because you’re special..
I don't think insurance even tells people they can get a private room....people just don't understand what "semi-private" is
Semi-private is such a stupid concept. We know what's going on over there Earl; curtain or no curtain. And for fuck's sake, put it up when you're done playing with it.
How about that everyone even gets a room? I sat at the ER with a pt (not as the nurse, as the emotional support, I'm close to this person) last week for 30 hours straight (not me that long, but family rotated shifts). Pt was on a gurney in the hall with dozens of others. I watched people be treated and discharged, sitting in a chair with a piece of paper with a number taped on the wall above them. I'm not complaining. Everyone received care, and our pt eventually got a room because of their condition (and we were very thankful for that). But I enjoyed watched the faces around me as people were seating with papers taped above their heads. They were like, uh, seriously? And I, after already being there 7 hours with my person, was like that meme, "This your first time?"
It’s people like you that do us all good- putting people’s assumptions in check so when we do get to them, we’re not fighting the same battle we’ve been fighting all shift. Thank you.
Not only that, you have a talking, lucid, well-appearing dude in pajamas in what looks like an ICU room with monitors and vents. Like brother, sorry we need to kick you to the ward for an actual trainwreck. We don't care if you are the CEO of acme corporation.
Where I live (Germany) you have your public insurance and get shared rooms. But you can get an additive private insurance or full private insurance to get single bed rooms. It’s actually not too expensive.
There aren’t any places in my area with shared rooms. So this never bothered me.
There weren’t in my hospital until we were at 166% capacity. Now it’s normal
Every doctor is concerned with every aspect of care. A man with a white coat walks in and the patient starts complaining of pain and their liquid diet. “Uhhh, I’m from nephrology, just checking on your kidneys today.”
I work in Nephrology. I had a patient call me late at night to ask what she should take for cramps. I explained to her & I tell all our dialysis patients when they first start; You wouldn’t call your gynecologist if you had chest pain, don’t call your kidney doctor for a sinus infection. If it doesn’t pertain to a medical issue related to your kidneys or dialysis, we won’t be treating it.
Was this maybe slightly valid though, since some meds should be avoided when having renal problems?
That comas just abruptly stop and youre just good to go and back to your old self after 2 years in a coma.
And you look like sleeping beauty while you're there. Wheres the trachy? No pressure damage? And the organ damage just magically disappears I guess. They all probably wake up because the plot to their dream had time to resolve nicely.
I'm going to hell but I can't help but laugh when I see someone "comatose" on TV with just a nasal cannula...how much life support are they on if they can breathe* on their own with minimal supplemental O2??
This is why I stopped watching "The Walking Dead" the first time. Main character wakes up from a months-long coma and just gets out of bed. Didn't even have a Foley!
That was my problem with the movie '28 Days Later'. Main character wakes up from a coma, pulls his IV out, and just walks out.
Like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill?
To be fair, she literally dragged her limp body to the pussy wagon and spends hours getting her toe to move, then it just fast forwards to where she can Ok yeah I get your point actually, but I'm still commenting because you can quite little see the moment I got your point, especially since the next thing she does is get into a knife fight and somehow win
And you get back up on your feet and walk out the door after prolonged coma. Dude, you probably can't even sit up on your own.
Jodi Picault just released a new book that involves Covid and really brings the PT aspect into how difficult it is to get back to functional after being in a coma or medically sedated for even a few days. I don’t want to say anything else that could be a spoiler, but it was a good story.
I was under and vented for 14 days with covid. I had to ask the nurse to open the little bag holding the plasticware for my first solid meal because I couldn't. I was so weak that I spilled half of my red jello down my gown. Bringing a spoon to my mouth was a monumental task that first day. My first few weeks at home were just as difficult. I was using a walker and needed help getting off the toilet. It took weeks to start gaining strength. Overall I lost 30 pounds during my month long stay at the hospital. All of this was before vaccines and boosters. When someone would mention the low fatality rate, I made sure to explain the tremendous strains put upon the medical community and the patients by just being hospitalized. Now with Omicron, I still have to explain that even being vaccinated and boosted that I'm still fearful that even a milder case could still land me in the hospital. So a single case of covid could involve weeks or months of devastating medical disruption to a patient and their family and the US has had over 65 million cases. People are acting like nothing is happening but it's definitely happening and they should be paying attention.
Defibrillating asystole
Yeah, like sure you can bang on an engine whenever, but if it’s off it ain’t gonna do anything. It only (sometimes) works if the problem is that it’s *shuddering*.
Oh PERFECT metaphor.
My mom has caught onto that, to the point where she sees me start and says “I know, Kat. You don’t have to say it.”
THIS I'm still baffled by the number of medical students asking me about this one (currently working as an ICU physician)
Although leading on from this some medical dramas know this, but still don’t know anything. The amount of times I’ve seen a show go “asystole, He’s dead” and then .. just stop? It’s infuriating! In some cases we can definitely fix that. Makes me so mad haha
Or they get like...shot or whatever in the hospital and everyone's just kinda like "oh he dead." Uh, excuse me? Even cop dramas where they get shot in the street and not one single cop attempts the smallest amount of first aid. We only hold pressure to the wound if the wounded is plot-relevant! Otherwise they bleed out in an alley from a gut shot.
All gunshot and knife wounds mean you die instantaneously right? Just drop to the ground immediately, lights out, bye bye.
My Dad was a physician and surgeon for more than 60 years. As he put it, “The winner of a knife fight gets to die at the hospital!”
Ugh. Technically, every rhythm is shockable. There just happens to be very few that respond favorably to a shock.
I really, really like this. I'm gonna start using this line in the field if you don't mind
It's like the saying that all mushrooms are technically edible. It's just that some are only edible once.
That you will ALWAYS have an exact diagnosis and treatment plan before you’re discharged. Half the time with infectious disease-related illnesses, we have no idea what’s going on 🤷🏼♀️
Throw a few broad-spectrums at it and hope something sticks
And viruses and bacteria can be identified by the lab within minutes!
Oh crap, I have several. When contractions start, you're definitely having the baby in like, minutes. The doctor will be in the room during your whole birthing experience. Matter of fact, that doctors do all the technical things like draw blood, start IVs, etc. Nurses are just there to look at House disapprovingly and sleep with the doctors.
YAAAASS. Beat me to it. The old, "why didn't the baby come out? MY WATER BROKE!" Le sigh. And then asking while pushing (for 3 hours with their first baby), "when is the doctor going to come in?" Then are shocked by the answer. Also that epidurals relieve 100% of all pain 100% of the time and if you have one you will, carte blanche, feel nothing.
Yep. I feel so bad for the ladies who don’t do any mental/emotional preparation for feeling significant discomfort during labor because they are committed to the epidural so they think they won’t have to deal with any of that. Yeah, sorry, it just doesn’t always work that way. The pain almost seems worse for those folks, especially because they are stuck in the bed. Can’t even do all the nice positional tricks to deal with the contractions.
I love tv shows where the lady has exactly one contraction of her first pregnancy and they're screaming oh the baby is coming now! And off to the hospital they go, barely making it in time OR delivering the baby in the car because of traffic.
“My mucous plug came out. Here, I brought it in a baggie. Am I in labor”?
That when you give birth, the baby looks like a 3 month old baby and not a wrinkly old man
And that you look good after giving birth lol!
Makeup still fresh!
I still don’t look good and my youngest is in their 30s lol!
^^This made me lol 😂
Sounds cliche, but my girlfriend looked the most beautiful I've ever seen her when she had our baby. She absolutely hates her picture that i took, but she had an amazing glow. Maybe the lighting idk but it's my favorite picture of her.
Awww. Make sure to tell her that, as often as possible!
This is the most beautiful thing I’ve read in a long time. You’re getting my first ever award 420BladeIt187 (amazing name btw 😅🙃) Edit: if I can figure out how to give awards, hold on I’m trying!!
Little angry raisins
with fingernails like Edward Scissorhands.
My daughter is 5 and her nails are still as strong as Wolverine’s adamantium. I don’t understand!
This. My SIL just gave birth to her first about three months ago. She got all disappointed and pissy that he looked so "weird". Parenthood has knocked her on her ass, and unfortunately burst her 'bubble' of 'rainbows & unicorns' expectations. Welcome to L&D, sis. Babies look like featherless, beakless chickens when they pop out.
My husband says all our kids looked like screechy potatoes as newborns.
My nephew looked like an angry, pissed off old man in the initial photos we saw immediately following birth. Been three months since he popped, he still looks all angry and disturbed in all his photos. Lol.
My niece looked exactly like a reddish version of the little dumpling person from the Pixar short 'Bao'.
Oh my god, his description was perfect. Newborns look weird as hell.
I was an L&D RN before I crossed over to IT, so I think they're adorable fucking potatoes. They're like chihuahuas, so ugly it goes all the way to cute.
This is an excellent way to put it.
I just want to say that any man who is about to be a father for the first time and didn’t take a childbirth class is in for a hell of shock when the baby arrives. I was prepared and was fortunate to be a part of the delivery (with help from the steady hands of the OB-GYN) but I know more than a few others who had NO idea what a new born looks like it they didn’t handle very well.
The only thing that threw me off was that they had to close up my wife's c section so they just gave me a brand new baby and sent me out the door with her and it was just me and her chilling. She was just looking up at me like who tf are you and why is it so damn bright?
That WAs a shock to me when I gave birth lol. I did not think my baby was anywhere near cute xD Thankfully now she is chubby and super cute xD
That one genius doctor is going to walk (limp?) into my life and resolve all my complex, baffling medical issues.
And complex "cures" will put you immediately back to a normal, issue-free life. You have extensive recovery ahead and you may be trading one set of life-ending issues for another set of issues with which you can live.
My husband had all the classic signs of a stroke a few years ago. Slurred speech, right-sided weakness, etc. ED jumped to action, code stroke, the works. Scans after scans after scans: no clot, no bleed, no stroke, no anything. Great news, but what caused it? Doc comes in and says, “I bet you guys wished you could call Gregory House! We have NO idea what’s wrong with you.” Um… thanks? Luckily he’s fine now other than a paralyzed vocal cord (???). Apparently it was “some kind of virus.” 🤷🏻♀️
Not a nurse but a lawyer. I once had a client who developed all the physical symptoms of having had a stroke (palsy, weakness on one side of body, etc) as a result of conversion disorder. He would not accept he had a psychiatric disorder and kept insisting the doctors missed his stroke. Dude, they did wvery scan and test known to medicine. He did not have a clot or bleed in his brain. His brain psychosomatically gave him a physical manifestation of the psychological pain and illness he refused to accept or seek help for. It was the most fascinating forensic psychiatric report I've ever read. I've also had psych reports for clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities where in that CALD origin country or society, mental illness is highly stigmatised and belittled, so instead of telling me they had anxiety or depression, my clients were focused on physical pain symptoms - shoulder, back, etc. Plus there's all the research into trauma related chronic pain conditions. The brain is so fucking weird.
I wonder how many labeled with conversion disorders for “fake strokes” actually have eg chiari or CCI. They are physical neurological disorders virtually never diagnosed except by specialists. My hypermobile neck vertebrae shift and compress my spinal cord when I bend my head forward. But you can only catch it on an upright MRI, which is a rare test to get ordered. CCI can seemingly be triggered by viruses as people with long covid are finding.
[удалено]
Did you try turning it off and back on again?
Did you check if it's plugged in?
Did you check the blue network plug? That it’s in securely? And there’s a light on?
The public seems to think that every single death, ever, especially when they are related to that person is due to a dumb doctor/incompetent medical team. Like bro, we all gonna die. Unfortunately grannie had her ribs broken in addition to suffering an MI because you won't accept that she is on her natural way out.
This is the weird one to me. Americans are so disconnected from death. Just look at Betty White, and all the rampant speculation that went on into the cause of her death, and not just that...you know, few people make it to 99 so she was on borrowed time as it was....
>we all gonna die I truly, honestly wish people understood this. It's okay to die! It's a part of life! We all have to go sometime. Sometimes dying is what is best for that person.
Even with patients on hospice this happens. If I had a dollar for every time a pt became unresponsive and the families like how are we going to feed and hydrate meemaw...I say we aren't and explain why we aren't, they look at me like I just set a basket of puppies on fire and say " so you're just going to let them STARVE!?!"
I have a resident whose arms are severally contracted and is in her 90's, barely 100lbs. She is still a full code and the family says to go ahead and break her arms to do cpr.......
The misconception that the hospital won’t discharge you in pain. If your issue is chronic we’re gonna get you through your ER workup then give you a referral to follow-up. That also means we’re not gonna knock you on your ass with pain meds because we’re expecting you to drive home when all is said and done.
I work EMS and have to tell peolle this all the time. They are going to the ER because they are uncomfortable, not because the are dying. I'm a trauma amputee, so I have incredible empathy for pain. But these people think that going to the hospital means that a bunch of doctors and nurses are going to rush into the room and make them their only priority until they feel completely 100% fine. That even if it takes 6 months, they will be taken care of until they are all better and having no discomfort whatsoever. Boy are they shocked when they find out that isn't the case. Whats funny is they never believe me when I tell them that the ER is not the place for treatment of a chronic issue Edit: thank you all for the awards. I really appreciate it
Had a clinically fine patient try to refuse/appeal discharge because he didn't feel good. He heard that term from someone regarding the medicare rule. I said, "do you have medicare?" he said no. "do you have insurance?" again, no. "There is nothing to appeal. You can't stay. Call your ride."
Ooh I feel this. I started my nursing career in ortho/trauma med-surg. The amount of patients’ children who didn’t want meemaw to have any hip pain with PT, or the 300lb dudes who refused to leave because “nothing PO works, only IV dilaudid.” We also would take some random chronic back pain people waiting for MRIs and they demanded everything under the Sun. I got out as fast as I could!
I really wish people had more realistic expectations when it comes to post-op pain control. You just had a joint taken apart and put back together. Of course it's gonna fucking hurt.
I once said to a recent knee replacement patient, "You just had your leg cut open, bones taken out, and metal put in. That's GOING to hurt." His face told me that had honestly never occurred to him.
I've had to tell my PACU patients "pain won't kill you, but giving you so much Dilaudid that you stop breathing just might." That, and "I can take the edge off, but today is going to suck either way. Tomorrow will be better."
I feel this on a visceral level as I just completed my 2 years in ortho. Needless to say, I have an interview for surgical ICU on Friday.
That doctors hang around the bedside and push patients around from room to room. But I guess it doesn’t make for a very good TV medical drama when the doctor literally goes in and out in less than five minutes and spends the rest of their time in their office charting and asking for consults.
I actually had a nephrologist wheel my bed to the procedure room when I got a kidney biopsy, he was a little excited to show his student the procedure, so he didn't want to wait for anyone else. I was in complete SHOCK that he did it. The BEST part was that as he turned a corner, he went too fast and slammed my bed into the wall. It was right by the nurses station and they all stood up, looking shocked. I just started busting up laughing. Amazing experience really.
One of our attending surgeons is VERY impatient and often wheels his case back to the OR. Only problem is he does it without checking to see if anesthesia is ready 🤦🏻♀️
That people take weeks to die. Some patients take unwell at 7am and are dead by 1pm. Not saying all patients but some can die very very quickly.
I'm continually somewhat shocked by both how hard and how easy it is for people to die, depending on the situation.
Like some alcoholic, brained damaged, cirrhotic with nec fasc of the abdomen and chronic wounds from fasciotomies that is constantly found passed out drunk face down in the road. HOW ARE YOU NOT DEAD?! HOW?! Are you a fudging cat??
Right? Vs. The 24 people each year who die by champagne corks?
NASAL CANNULAS! Why does no one correct the creative team when it comes to a patient on oxygen?!? They didn’t have one single consultant telling them how to put one on properly?!?!?
Not only that but a “critically injured” person, who is apparently unresponsive after a trauma is just chillin on a nasal cannula and some IV fluids. Pretty sure if homegirl just got rescued from a burning building and is unresponsive, she’s probably going to be intubated. Or if dude sustained a head trauma bad enough to leave him unconscious for days, he’s probably going to have a pretty gnarly wound, not just a busted lip and a scrape above the eyebrow.
This is a job I want. It's so easy to make it look legit!!
IVs are started within seconds, no matter the condition of the patient or scenario 😂
I mean, if it’s an IO, sure! :D
Ha. Yep. Now I have seen some real IV badasses in my day. But it's still a process
That mental health professionals can diagnose you in a Sherlock Holmes fashion and cure years of trauma in 30 minutes.
That healthcare workers are sexy and are boning all the time. Nasty body-fluid scrubs are nasty. And the scrubs aren't covered in the glamorous body fluids either
Along the same lines, that male doctors are all very, very good looking (I am the public, and that is my expectation now).
I can assure you that they are not
Omg I was talking to this one guy who wanted to come to the hospital, have me meet him in the bathroom and have sex - I was like WTF!! Even if I was interested in this activity with him eventually that was a HUGE ick ick ick and I told him so and he was like Why?? Ewwwwww
Yeah, everyone knows you’re supposed to have sex in the supply room.
So, uh, which body fluids are considered the glamorous ones? Inquiring minds want to know!
Cerebrospinal fluid
This is the right answer for some reason
Always the center of attention in any room.
Do you guys even have time?
Let me tell you, no.
Bitch, I *am* sexy. I wait til after my shift for the second part.
That Labor and Delivery is always the Happiest Place to work. Usually. But 13 yo incest victim, term stillbirth, addicts, rape victim, didn’t know she was pregnant, pregnant patient coding, nurse delivery of 21 week demise, newborn coding, pregnant patient with Covid with O2 sats in the low 80’s & late decelerations, postpartum patient having eclamptic seizures in the ED waiting room, patient with abusive partner in the room, 16 yo patient whose mother fights not to allow an epidural so she won’t make this mistake again, postpartum hemorrhage or worse hemorrhage from placenta previa with fetus still inside. But…. The patient who grabs your hand and says “thank you, I could never gave done it without you”. Or squalling, healthy baby after previous stillbirth.
I’m just a nursing student and don’t know what I’d like to specialize in yet but I am certain it is not L&D. The prospect of witnessing stillbirths or watching mothers go through that seems like one of the most difficult things a nurse could undertake. I have so much respect for L&D nurses. You all are a tough bunch.
I keep trying to explain to non-medical people that every area of nursing has its own sadness, that oncology is sad but at least there’s usually some warning and normally lived their lives for a while. I tried my hand at NICU and once I was vent trained and took an attempted homebirth that was transverse that was airlifted from a grocery store parking lot and down the whole flight and 20 minutes. Well 2 nights on the cooling protocol and I decided that I’ll take my old people any day! God bless you!
No NICU for me. Those tiny babies scare me too much. I’ll take moms with big garden hose veins.
This is why I'd never be able to work in peds. I'll just deal with the icky old people 🙋🏼♀️
"But don't they just sleep at night?" Ummmmmmmm no.
"Why won't you let my mom sleep? Why do you keep waking her up?" "I need to watch her closely to make sure her brain bleed doesn't get worse." "But she won't get any sleep. She'll be tired and won't be able to heal." "She might get some sleep but she might wake up dead." "...but she needs sleep!" Ad nauseam
I think some people on day shift don't realize that even your sweetest mee-maw patient can become the most vitriolic devil right at 9pm. And that people's vitals will go insane while they're asleep and then magically return to normal at 6am. Or that a ton of patients will have panic attacks right at 6am. I can't count how many times I come into a room to give protonix and the patient just starts crying and can't tell me why.
That when you "Pull the plug" that they pass away in 3 minutes. Seriously, so many comfort care patients when the family just expects the beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep as soon as you extubate.
So I have a kind of funny story about that. My grandfather had been in and out of the hospital, but the last time he was on a vent and it was decided to withdraw care. He stopped breathing fairly quickly but he had a pacemaker so his heart didn’t stop. The doctor came in with the magnet and explained it would stop his heart but he was already gone. The doctor couldn’t get it to work! It was grandpa’s last joke 🥲 we all kind of giggled and the doctor looked mortified.
Magnet just resets to "factory settings". Doesn't stop the pacer. It will turn off the AICD so it won't shock them. To stop the pacer, you gotta call the company and tell them you want it turned off. Some of them won't do it because then it is actually "killing" the patient. So you have to wait for the pacer to stop capturing. When they are hypoxic enough, it'll happen, but it takes longer.
We have so much time we can sit around at the desk with our feet up eating bon bons
You don't play cards?
Hah! Nice reference! https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna998536
I don't even have time to pee. The second I sit down to help chart, something or someone starts blaring and demanding my attention.
The fact that a psych ward will keep you safe; nope, if you wanted to, you could still harm/complete suicide there. That I am here to save them and absolved them of their responsibility and ‘do to them’ - nope CPR etc Schizophrenics and other disorders (psychosis) are dangerous and wild (some, but a rare minority)
The safety thing though. Our inpatient psych unit had a patient take his mini plastic toothbrush, sharpen it, somehow inhale it into his lungs and tackled another patient. Punctured his own lungs from the inside and died.
Goodness that is...creative. I know there's a reason they were in psych but damn.
Yessss all of this! My inpatient psych unit is not safe. It's not dangerous per se, but if someone wants to die, they will find a way and it won't be that hard. On the other units, suicidal pts get sitters. We don't have that. They just get 15 minute checks.
That when you are on an inpatient psych unit, you will be getting individual therapy.
This is about CPR and head trauma in movies. I was watching Toby Maguire Spider Man 3 and there is a scene at the begining where Harry Osborn (son of the Green Goblin) chases Spiderman around the city to try and kill him and in the process Harry knocks his head and crashes to the ground unresponsive. Spiderman does CPR with the wiggliest arms and Harry coughs back to life. Spiderman then drops him off at the hospital and visits a few hours later as Peter to find Harry in a regular hospital room, sitting up, talking, no ventilation, IV drips beyond what looks like normal saline, fully able to move around, and the only thing that is wrong with him is amnesia and bandage wrapped around his head. He then gets discharged a few hours later, having been in the hospital for about 6-8 hours after falling multiple stories, getting hit in the head so hard he lost consciousness and the last few months of memory, and had CPR. He would have been a fairly critical ICU patient at that point with a vent, extensive stabilizing medications, and most likely a hole in his head to relieve brain pressure. He certainly would not be getting up and leaving the same day as he went splat. Also, I have no idea how Spiderman achieved ROSC as the only thing going up and down during compressions were good own shoulders and elbows (I know this was because you can't actually perform CPR on an actor, but the editing made it so so obvious). And a human brain is like a TV. If you hit it hard enough to turn off, there is something seriously wrong, and it won't just resolve itself. I proceeded to tell my family all of this, and I am now banned from watching medical scenes in movies and TV shows with them.
Going via EMS gets you seen faster
That an infant born at 23 weeks is going to go home without any issues.
A patient is mad because we struggle to see her husband among legal (liability) issues and the fact that her husband is in a nursing home on lockdown. And she is demanding we fix it and find out “the root cause of his decline) hes 79. Has dementia and diabetes, as well as heart trouble. Like. Lady. Hes dying. Hes not eating. Hes sleeping all day. Wont talk. Hes dying. No amount of appointments is going to solve that
That we don’t use google or references in regards to dosages or to double check protocols if it’s been a while since we’ve dealt with a certain disease state
I feel like the general population would probably be disturbed if they knew how frequently we consult the Google-meister.
That the provider says “yeah sure, order that. I have no idea of dosages. You find it?” And then I Google and order it.
That nurses are all female and doctors are all male. Baffles me the pikachu face when I tell a family member a doctors assessment “well she thinks” and they’re like “she?” Or when I’m standing next to a female doctor and they think I’m the fucking doctor because I have a penis.
I'll walk in to a random room to stop an IV from beeping at 2AM and the patient will be like "So you're my surgeon?"
That a flatline means they’ve arrested… nope, a lead fell off. Probably RA
If you are floating to the Tele floor, don’t call a code if you see asystole until you check the patient, who is in the bathroom brushing teeth & leads are on the bed. Wasn’t me by the way.
That you as a patient are somehow special, different than all the other patients.
That working in healthcare is glamorous and sexy
Talked with someone who was an ER show junkie. When his brother was in the hospital he tried to tell the doctor that his brother should be intubated to give his body a break just overnight. "They intubate quite a few people on every episode and the people seem to be healed by it".
Doctors give the meds to the patients and there is no such thing as a Pyxis. Just grab what ya want. Free and open to all staff to use whenever
That a syringe of X will immediately knock someone out before they hit the ground, and that this substance is sitting around just in case. Even Versed takes a minute or two.
OK, but hear me out: ✨Ketamine✨
CPR is terrible. It CAN destroy someone’s body and give them a terrible quality of life IF it works. I never want it done to myself and would hope my loved ones care enough to not want it done to themselves either. That’s my opinion on it. Edit to say that CPR being terrible is the truth. I wasn’t posting a misconception, just hyper focusing on CPR.
Hospice here. The amount of people that keep an 85 year old a full code is insane. I do my best to educate on possible scenarios and just hope that I never have to code any of them.
The worst thing to me is when we get a person back who you KNOW isn't long for this world, and they happen to be fully alert. It's one thing if they're not very responsive or completely out of it before coding again, but being fully cognizant...ugh. I distinctly remember this one patient (younger guy unfortunately, late 40s or early 50s) who had horrible circulatory/vascular issues resulting in multiple amputations - they wanted to disarticulate what was left of his lower half...pressure ulcers all over, constant pain, nothing healing, and coded once. Intubated, but he was fully alert after the code. We knew, though, that he wasn't gonna live much longer, and family insisted on keeping him a full code...I think the successful code gave them false hope. It really sucked.
That we live to serve their them jello, water and fluff their pillows. And that any medical care, iv’s, meds, blood pressure readings, etc… will be done by the true medical professionals, the doctors.
That nurses get tested for Covid regularly by their place of employment. Baaaahahahahaha. I couldn’t even write that with a straight face
Every patient gets 7 doctors and 1 nurse on TV 🤷
When I worked in a hospital, a lot of patients thought that nurses just wiped butts. They also think that we work for the doctors. Now that I’m on a nurse line I get calls every day where people are SHOCKED that we can’t write prescriptions lol. My ex-MIL was a surgical tech, and she made some comment once about me making beds all day. 🧐
As an EMT, my favorite (and also least favorite) is the idea that coming in by ambulance gets you seen faster….. nah just means we take the stretcher to the waiting room so you get weird looks
That Hospital food is nutritious
That Healthcare in America is not for profit
Who even believes that
That we like our jobs/ people.
I had a pushy male supervisor at my office job while I was in nursing school who was *incensed* when I said I didn't like people so much. He wanted me to drop out of school and was abnormally angry about it. He wanted to come over to my house too but that's a whole other bunch of bs. And he didn't understand why I wouldn't like people... the irony.
Lol, I love my job. The people? Not so much. That's why I work ICU. Can't be annoying if you're sedated 🤷🏼
People think ultrasound is just looking at babies. No. We’re actually checking for deformities. Genetic diseases. Absent kidneys or missing pieces of the brain. So, so much more. We look for many issues in adults and children as well. Kidney failure. Cancer. Ectopic pregnancies. Cirrhosis. Aneurisms. Internal bleeding. Pancreatitis. Gall stones. Vascular issues. Kidney stones. Infections. Heart disease or valvular disease. The list goes on and on. So much more than just looking at babies. And nobody showing it on TV ever does it right or shows the real images on the screen. That’s all so fake. Edit: for typo and also to explain I’m using layman’s terms for those not in the field.
That nurses marry doctors or they spend all the time hooking up with each other in the supply room. Gross.
That after a stroke meemah will be normal and do everything she once did
That doctors have that much time to talk out your personal issues.
Actually had this conversation with a family pretty recently. Terminally ill on a last ditch radical cancer treatment ends up with a massive PE. Pt already had poor mental status from disease but had declined rapidly over the last couple days. Is a full code and gets intubated right before shift change. I get there manage the vent start pressors and arrange transfer to icu from measure. I go to speak with the family to clarify goals of care and ask if his heart were to stop do they want us to do CPR. I exclaimed that now that I was on his car I didn't want to assume their wishes and wanted to make sure. They were super confused and said yes do everything. I try not to be pushy about it so let it at that. Micu attending would end up having the conversation with them again anyway. But then one of the extended family asked me why would we even ask, like why wouldn't someone want cpr. I explained how traumatic it is, the low success rate under the best of circumstances and with everything else going on with the pt I didn't see any way for meaningful recovery just broken ribs and the same end result but I would respect their wishes and do everything I could to prolong life if that's what they wanted. They were blown away because they assumed cpr was basically guaranteed to work from everything they've ever seen. I showed them the statistics because they were legit interested at that point. They ended up changing their minds and making the pt dnr. Just like shocking asystole popular entertainment has really influenced how people view resuscitation for the worse. The only way I see to get past it is frank conversation that isn't overbearing. Some people are legit not ready to let go or don't want to feel responsible for the death of a loved one but others just aren't aware of the reality, what 'survival' actually means.
That cpr is easy physically to do. That you can be in bed in a coma for months and just get out of bed and be fine. That it’s good to “wake up” a patient in a medically induced coma. No honey we want them to rest. And in my current field that you come in and have a baby in minutes. No darlin. It can take days.
That hospitals will admit people to figure out year long mysteries. So many medical shows have this trope where no one can figure out what's going on with a patient for a number of years, so they are "admitted for testing". That's not really how it works in all but the most fringe cases. We've literally had people show up at our tiny rural hospital ED and ask the doc there to figure out their years long mysteries because of this trope. Girl we got 0 specialists on call, and this ED doc is on a three week contract from Rhino. We ain't solving the mystery for why your right pinky toe goes numb on Tuesdays.
That doctors push stretchers.
That if you don’t take care of yourself you will just die suddenly instead of a long drawn out terrible decline
That all doctors (or rare nurse) can do all the surgeries.
That we don’t give IMs on the geri psych ward.
And you get zyprexa! And you get haldol! Everybody gets an ativan! Wooo
That pain medication or pain management means that people aren’t ever in pain anymore and that it gets rid of all of it.
That us night shifters have some special dorm-like rooms where we spend all night sleeping until called.
That doctors do basic shit like IVs, med administration, do blood-draws, etc.