Common Sense, Right Out The Window (Story Submission)
added by geena on May 1, 2005 at 8:32 PM
From H-guy, the Tanfastic MD:
When I did my sub-internship month earlier this year, I had one of those "wake-up call" moments that are embarassing at the time, but in hindsight you're glad to have happened. I walked into the room of one of my ICU patients and noticed that the pulse oximeter was reading 75%. After having a momentary freak-out, I looked at the patient and was puzzled by the fact that he didn't look like he was in any distress. As I was struggling with whether I should bring this up with a real doctor, the nurse walked in. I asked her why the pulse-ox was so low. She looked at me like I were an idiot. She asked me if I bothered to check if it was even attatched to the patient--which it wasn't. So, while I was running down the differential for hypoxia, I tossed common sense right outta the window.
A comment about the nurse. This was my first time meeting this nurse and she sure as hell never let me live that incident down. She was rude to me for the whole month after that, but that was just how she was, and I learned to find her attitude humorous. She had seen my type come and go for the past 25 years. I was just another snot-nosed uptight med-student to her, and she was a hard core ICU nurse from whom I learned alot. Fortunately, I learned early on to be friendly with the nurses from the outset, b/c among other things, they can really make your life a living hell if you don't give them their due props. By the end of the month I had eventually killed her with my kindess, and I even got a smile out of her. I felt I owed her that much for knocking some sense into me.
Progress Notes
I'm glad that you realize that people should give the nurses their "props". Often, the bedside nurse is more knowledgable about the patient than the doctor who spends less than two minutes with them. I don't agree with nurses with bad attitudes though. It makes for a long shift for everyone around them. Great story!
added by Nurse Practitioners Save Lives on May 4, 2005 1:49 PM
Ha ha, great! Reminds me of the time when another staff member asked me, the resident technology guru, to check out why the brand new monitors were unable to get a pulse-ox reading on a patient. I went into the patient's room, and checked the monitor. The module was set up correctly, all cords were plugged in, and the probe was glowing its characteristic red. I myself was puzzled for a minute, when I had a thought. I checked for the patient's radial pulse. Absent. I checked for a carotid pulse. Also absent. I reported back to the staff member "the reason you can't get a pulse-ox reading is because the patient doesn't have a pulse."
Luckily for us, the patient was a DNR.
added by Carsten on May 10, 2005 4:14 PM
Uuhh, there's absolutely nothing that this nurse did that is deserving of props. She was rude and uncouth to a beginning student. Worse, she persisted that way for the rest of the month. The med student is being very gentlemanly by saying the things he has, and indeed was very tactful with her.
That's to his credit, but it does nothing to change the fact that the nurse is a *bleep*.
I would be very interested in how nurses would have responded if the roles were reversed, and the story was about a senior doc who lashed out at a mere nursing student, and was also consistently rude for a month.
Would any nurse have said "I'm glad you realize how crucially important doctors are and gave him props. Doctors virtually always understand the biomedical and psychosocial conundrums of the patient better than anyone else..."
added by MD on May 24, 2005 12:04 PM
So, what brought you to the hospital today?