When I started out in nursing, the hospital I worked at required CNA’s to wear cranberry, RT’s to wear teal, and RN’s to wear royal blue, etc. We could wear certain scrub tops that were approved and that matched the royal blue pants. The hospital did not pay for them.

When I moved and got a new job, there were no standard uniforms. We could wear whatever we wanted. Some people took this too far and started looking a bit unprofessional – scrub pants with little t-shirts that actually showed off belly buttons, that sort of thing. One or two nurses wore street clothes, but they actually looked fine to me. It wasn’t like they were wearing jeans or anything. It looked appropriate in my opinion.

A committee was formed to discuss the possibility of requiring standard uniforms. Most of us in ICU (and the rest of the hospital) were completely and totally against it. We liked our individuality and we didn’t want to look the same. I realize that there are professions that wear standard uniforms (police, EMT’s, firefighters, the military, etc), but some of us felt as though we should not be told what to wear.

Patients often comment on our scrub tops, usually compliments :). Then again, it was argued that if we told patients at the outset that all RN’s are wearing blue, they’d be able to discern who they were talking to. Or, you know, the person could just tell them that they were the RN. Why make things so hard?

Most of us felt it was up to the manager to take care of those who were dressed inappropriately.

The idea was eventually shot down, but I found it most interesting that the hospital was prepared to buy everyone’s uniforms for them, the number of which was to be based on how often one worked. I couldn’t believe that they’d spend so much money on dressing everyone.

So what do you do? Once again, there’s a poll up at Nursing Voices if you care to weigh in there!

To my sweet Secret Pal: YUM!!!!. I had to hide the box from my husband :-)

My interview with Bertalan is up at ScienceRoll!

Get along lil doggies (what does that mean, anyway?)! Change of Shift is up at Nurse Ratched’s Place! She’s got the niftiest stories of the nursing blog world all rounded up.

As far as gossip goes, Babs RN and Ambulance Driver have announced that they are in sweet bloggy love. If you’re in the mood for the down and dirty, visit Babs. But for the long sweet romance story, visit AD. Good luck you crazy kids! :) Might there be live blogging from the wedding?

When a patient is going to have a colonoscopy, the colon has to be cleaned out so that the doctor can see what’s goin on in there.

To achieve this, the doctor often orders Golytely, which is an electrolyte solution meant to cause some serious cleaning-out while preventing dehydration and electrolyte imbalances. We sometimes give it in the ICU to patients who are to undergo a colonoscopy the next day. If they have an NG tube, we just mix it up and put it down that. If they don’t, they have to drink a glass of the stuff every 10 minutes.

An entire gallon of it.

Think of a really vile salty drink, then imagine having to drink a gallon of it within about 4 hours. Some complain more than others, but I think it’s safe to say that it isn’t pleasant.

It’s highly effective, though.

Apparently I’ve mentioned the process to my husband before, because one day he was walking around during his lunch break and found what might be a possible replacement for what has up until now been a very uncomfortable process! Instead of this:

People could just eat bags of this:

I found it to be quite an unfortunate name for a candy. And it isn’t just the name. Apparently if you’re “sensitive” and you eat too much, it really can possibly stand in for the other stuff!

Well, even if you weren’t exactly looking for the laxative effect, the bag claims that a serving of these candies actually counts as 1 exchange of fruit.

?!?!?!?!

Since when do lemon oil and tangerine oil count as a fruit??

Image credit

(Click to enlarge!)

That’s my boy!

…Is up at Nursing Jobs.org! (The NJO blog!) Kim has done her usual amazing job of rounding up posts by the blogosphere’s nurses.

Pixel One, Purl Two is a nurse blogger who decided that we as nurses should take care of each other (‘cuz we don’t have enough to take care of?!) and has come up with an idea. She’s proposing a secret pal for nurses care package exchange starting next month. Details are here!
So yeah… in order to get a package, you have to send a package, but I personally think that’s fun, too :-)

If you’re coming here from Nursing Link and you’ve already read this article, click here to read my personal review of the movie!

“Ladies and gentlemen, I think we can agree on two things: The American health-care system is busted and Michael Moore is not the guy to fix it.”

And thus begins a rather scathing review of “SiCKO” by Stephen Hunter at the Washington Post.

According to Peter Barry Chowka at American Thinker, “The lead up to Sicko’s June 29 national roll out was a genuine phenomenon. Prior to its opening, with only a small number of reviews actually published, Sicko had already become the most hyped, and written about, movie of 2007, and possibly of the past decade.”

The past decade??

Is the actual film worthy of the hype that was created before its release? That depends on who you ask, of course. Hospital Impact has a very thorough Roundup of SiCKO reviews. As said in the comments, “My doctor recommends tests and procedures and medications, but ultimately, a healthcare insurance pencil-pusher decides what is “medically necessary” and reimburses accordingly.” Moore’s film reveals that the “pencil-pushers” are not necessarily your average Joe off the street, but instead are physicians who are paid handsomely for their expert opinions in denying your care – oops, I mean denying payment for your care.

Moore wasn’t necessarily interested in presenting both sides of the story, either:

“But one aspect missing from the film is the defense. Do not expect to hear anyone speak well of the care they received in the U.S. On the other hand, patients and doctors from Canada, Britain, France and Cuba marvel at their health care.”

‘Course, Moore’s missive doesn’t need to include a defense when you can simply get your information biased to the other side from websites such as Free Market Cure. As you can guess, this website is not exactly dedicated to the idea of socialized medicine, but instead puts forth ideas relating to consumer-directed healthcare. And what’s wrong with our system anyway? Here’s a theory:

“… Americans – whether privately insured or publicly covered – tend to be over-insured, and thus less sensitive to prices. And so we come to a paradox: American health care is so expensive because it’s so cheap. That is, with Americans paying just 14 cents out-of-pocket for every health dollar, they have little incentive to economize on health expenses. Americans have access to the most technologically sophisticated system in human history – yet pay pennies on the dollar out of their own pockets. The upshot? A health care system that is heavy in cost but not necessarily strong in satisfaction and uneven in quality.”

Several controversial issues are raised in this movie, including personal accounts of insurance companies denying payment for life-saving procedures and 9/11 workers having problems getting adequate health care for conditions they contracted due to working at ground zero. Moore also tackles the incident that happened last year when Kaiser dumped a confused and disoriented homeless patient in the middle of Skid Row. Slate Magazine’s Austin Goolsbee doesn’t disagree with Moore’s assertion that America’s healthcare system is broken, but does take issue with his “policy prescription”:

“For Moore, though, the answer is not reform of the current system. It is having the government run it all. He sets out on a worldwide tour to show us how great a single-payer system is in countries that have it. And here’s where his policy prescription goes into overdrive.”

Yes, there are many people flinging their opinions about this movie around the internet, and employees at Google are no exception. A blogger for Google’s Health Advertising Blog suggested that the healthcare industry fight back. How, you ask? With ads, of course: “Moore attacks health insurers, health providers, and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst. Moore’s film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare’s interest in patient well-being and care.”

The entry knocked Google off of its firmly neutral stance, and the blogger in question apologized, saying that she was expressing her own opinion, which did not represent the opinion of her employer.

And hey – if you’re the kind of person who likes to stay in the thick of it all, consider joining this coalition: “Calling it the “Scrubs for SiCKO” campaign, organizers will recruit registered nurses and doctors to every theater in the nation where “SiCKO” opens to ensure that caregivers – in SiCKO scrubs-are in the audience.

The caregivers will distribute information and urge moviegoers to join the drive for a fundamental overhaul of the nation’s dysfunctional healthcare system – as is so brilliantly described in “Sicko.” They will urge the audience to help pass single-payer/Medicare-for-all-type legislation such as HR 676 now pending in Congress and several states, and make it a central focus of the presidential campaign.”

Whatever your opinion of Moore’s movie may be, whether you consider it to be brilliant, misguided, or blatantly inaccurate – even if it doesn’t reveal the perfect solution, realize that at the very least, it is creating a national dialogue about the quagmire that is healthcare in America. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

(more…)

Change of Shift is on its second year and is being hosted by Beth over at Nursing Link. It’s the first time CoS has been hosted at a site other than a nurse blog! Lots of great posts to read!