Most ridiculous question from a nurse while on call

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zenman said:
You know what medicine is. Now, what can do you when you don't have a stethoscope, labs, x-rays, MRIs...without info you normally obtain with the aid of electricity or other devices.
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We have to agree on a definition of "practicing medicine" before we can take the stance it cannot be done without electricity.

So, I'll ask you again. Define "practice medicine". Define your terms.
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zenman said:
Actually I was grown up (and taking care of people) before you were born. I'm am afflicted with genetic hiliarity so I understand your point. Still confused why this forum exists when mods shut down similar one where you could do the same with your peers. I was looking forward to that one.
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U know we all here respect nurses I mean my mom is a nurse so I know what it takes to be one BUT if something happens to the patient in surgery who takes the beating me or u?
So if u go to sleep and someone wake u up for a silly reason will u be angry or not?
 
zenman said:
Actually I was grown up (and taking care of people) before you were born. I'm am afflicted with genetic hiliarity so I understand your point. Still confused why this forum exists when mods shut down similar one where you could do the same with your peers. I was looking forward to that one.
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As you have been told previously,SDN is for physicians. Thus just as we do not allow threads where non-physicians can bash us, we also do not allowing inter-specialty bashing. History has shown us that such threads always lead to hurt and angry feelings. This has long been policy and is really very easy to understand.
 
smq123 said:
I'm not sure if you're trying to stir up trouble, or if you really are confused, but in case it's the latter....


Again, this is a RESIDENCY forum....not a "residency and nursing" forum. While attacks that denigrate nurses are not welcome, either, venting about silly phone calls that we get at 3 AM is appropriate.
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Actually just trying to help you out. Have you actually thought about what you could do to prevent or at least decrease the calls you get during the night?

But I won't tarry here long.
 
jdh71 said:
We have to agree on a definition of "practicing medicine" before we can take the stance it cannot be done without electricity.

So, I'll ask you again. Define "practice medicine". Define your terms.
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You already failed when you agreed to a dare without checking out your opponent. Always do that first.:D

You can use this one: Medicine: the science of preventing, diagnosing, alleviating, or curing disease. I'll bet in your daily rounds you consult a lot of lab and other data which you can only obtain with the use of electricity. While you might have a lot of information in your head you might be a little limited with your bare hands. I, on the other hand have training in using my hands and other senses which will (and has) made me a popular person away from civilization. And that's not all in my bag, so to speak....
 
Winged Scapula said:
As you have been told previously,SDN is for physicians. Thus just as we do not allow threads where non-physicians can bash us, we also do not allowing inter-specialty bashing. History has shown us that such threads always lead to hurt and angry feelings. This has long been policy and is really very easy to understand.
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No, I heard you the first time and you still don't get the entire picture. But continue; I'll leave you alone.
 
zenman said:
While you might have a lot of information in your head you might be a little limited with your bare hands. I, on the other hand have training in using my hands and other senses which will (and has) made me a popular person away from civilization. And that's not all in my bag, so to speak....
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So can you provide examples of what you are referring to? You said that as physicians we need to utilize electricity and that as a non physician healthcare practitioner make you a popular person away from the restraints of modern civilization. Would you mind so I can better practice medicine without the restraints of electricity to elucidate?
 
zenman said:
No, I heard you the first time and you still don't get the entire picture. But continue; I'll leave you alone.
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If I have misunderstood then please educate me. You've stated twice that you don't understand why this thread is allowed but one bashing other physicians was not. I think we've been fairly clear about why that is. So what's this "big picture" I'm missing?
 
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zenman said:
You already failed when you agreed to a dare without checking out your opponent. Always do that first.:D

You can use this one: Medicine: the science of preventing, diagnosing, alleviating, or curing disease. I'll bet in your daily rounds you consult a lot of lab and other data which you can only obtain with the use of electricity. While you might have a lot of information in your head you might be a little limited with your bare hands. I, on the other hand have training in using my hands and other senses which will (and has) made me a popular person away from civilization. And that's not all in my bag, so to speak....
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Actually, we can get along diagnosing and treating patients without electricity just fine, thank you. Last I checked, taking a history and doing a physical exam does not require a bunch of extra equipment. Further, there are plenty of "low tech" solutions to problems, or diagnostic modalities (urine dipstick, hand centrifuge, pocket microscopes, etc). I never seemed to be short on patients in the village clinics in Belize. Plus, OMT works pretty well for lots of musculoskeletal complaints, and all you need is someplace for the patient to lie down (do this on the floor all the time).
 
zenman said:
You know what medicine is. Now, what can do you when you don't have a stethoscope, labs, x-rays, MRIs...without info you normally obtain with the aid of electricity or other devices.
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My stethoscope doesn't require electricity :confused:. I must be doing something wrong.
 
zenman said:
While you might have a lot of information in your head you might be a little limited with your bare hands. I, on the other hand have training in using my hands and other senses which will (and has) made me a popular person away from civilization. And that's not all in my bag, so to speak....
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Wow. Are you for real? Every physician comes up with a differential after doing a history and physical even before labs are drawn. Geez, get over yourself. If a patient's abdominal exam is tympanitic and distended with a past surg hx, and they haven't passed gas or stool in 3 days, I'm going to bet $1000 on SBO secondary to adhesions alex. And hey, look, I didn't even need electricity to make the diagnosis! :rolleyes: If you're telling me you can differentiate between adhesions and Ogilvies without a CT, I'd love for you to educate us all Dr. Nurse.

I'm pretty sure we all learned the clinical manifestations of hypercalcemia during the second year of medical school. It's not too difficult to recognize them and throw some Ca at the patient if electrolyte labs weren't available. In addition, as a DO, I'm pretty damn good with my hands as well.

But please, by all means, continue to think you are better than doctors because you don't need electricity :laugh:
 
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ZENMAN
Do u a have a problem with us in general?
Are u a male nurse because that will explain a lot why u are attacking everybody here.

So I think the problem isn't with this topic I think u have a problem with doctors in general
 
J1515 said:
But please, by all means, continue to think you are better than doctors because you don't need electricity :laugh:
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See, the way I interpret what he's saying with using "hands and other senses" is that he's willing to taste the urine, so he's popular when the dipsticks run out. I definitely won't be doing that.
 
SOLDIER said:
ZENMAN
Do u a have a problem with us in general?
Are u a male nurse because that will explain a lot why u are attacking everybody here.

So I think the problem isn't with this topic I think u have a problem with doctors in general
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Damn dude no need to make a dig at male nurses in particular. All the ones at my ED rock.
 
spacecowgirl said:
I'm on-call as a pharmacist (rural hospital, pharmacy not staffed around the clock) and I get some pretty stupid questions too.

2 am
Nurse: I have an order for a clonidine patch and we don't have that strength in the Pyxis.
Me: You know that's not going to lower the patient's BP for a few days, right?
Nures: I just know I have an order from the MD and I need it STAT.
Me: :smack:

Sometimes it's just easier for me to come in and get it rather than page the doc again at 2 am.
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Oh yeah...that would go over great.

Me: Gee doctor, we didn't have the strength you ordered in the Pyxis, so I just used what we had. The pharmacist said it wouldn't matter for a couple of days anyway.

Doctor: %!$%! *&^%!!. Followed by bloodshed.
 
dpmd said:
See, a good nurse would have mentioned to the prescribing MD that the clonidine patch isn't stocked as a stat med because it takes several days to work. That way the pharmacist doesn't get an unnecessary phone call, the MD gets educated (I will admit to having thrown out the idea of a patch before, before I learned better), and the patient gets his BP treated (I'm assuming a stat med was being ordered in response to a call about a very high BP-otherwise the whole scenario is lame)
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You can't know off the top of your head what is stocked in Pyxis. Geez Louise, do you know how many meds are in those things?
 
Ashers said:
See, the way I interpret what he's saying with using "hands and other senses" is that he's willing to taste the urine, so he's popular when the dipsticks run out. I definitely won't be doing that.
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There was an episode of house.....
 
Ashers said:
Oh ok. Never seen that one. Disgusting.
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You could just take the sample and throw it out back behind the hospital. If its swarming with insects really quick - high glucose.
 
While on call last night/this AM I got a page because a 17mo with h/o controlled SVT heart rate was <100. The RN kept telling me he had a heart condition with a high heart rate, so the low heart rate was worrying her, so she didn't want to the CRM set to less than 85. I reinforced several times that a low heart rate was OK, but we were worried about the higher heart rates. My attending actually started laughing when I told her, and said that I should've just said to set the monitor to 60, which I did tell the nurse during the night, and she refused.

Also last night/this AM, got a page about a kid with a temp of 99.4. Kid had fever of unknown origin. We use celcius, so I thought maybe she mistyped and meant 39.4. No, it was 99.4, and she wanted tylenol.
 
Ashers said:
No, it was 99.4, and she wanted tylenol.
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Nurses love to diagnose and treat fevers. Love it. Unfortunately they don't get it right most of the time.
 
fab4fan said:
You can't know off the top of your head what is stocked in Pyxis. Geez Louise, do you know how many meds are in those things?
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I guess my hospital keeps less stuff than most in ours because my nurses always know what they can't get out of it as a stat (everything else comes up from pharmacy, and at night may take a long time, so they let me know it won't be stat in case I want to substitute)

I'll second the not hating on male nurses. All the ones at my hospital are cool, and the one I married is the best (though I might be biased)
 
The most problems I have is with male nurses.
 
dpmd said:
I guess my hospital keeps less stuff than most in ours because my nurses always know what they can't get out of it as a stat (everything else comes up from pharmacy, and at night may take a long time, so they let me know it won't be stat in case I want to substitute)

I'll second the not hating on male nurses. All the ones at my hospital are cool, and the one I married is the best (though I might be biased)
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They are unit dependent, to certain degrees. I have no clue what all is in the Pyxis other than the few meds I routinely take out. I don't even know if there's a reference to check. We have a pharmacy right on our floor; most of our meds are IV so we don't get much out of the Pyxis.

The place where I used to work had a pharmacy that left at 1600, on the dot. If you didn't have the med in Pyxis and it wasn't something in the limited access the supervisor had in the pharmacy, you were SOL. It took an act of God to get the pharmacist to come in on off hours.
 
Winged Scapula said:
If I have misunderstood then please educate me. You've stated twice that you don't understand why this thread is allowed but one bashing other physicians was not. I think we've been fairly clear about why that is. So what's this "big picture" I'm missing?
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The big picture is that you are the top medical professionals making fun of another group of professionals who you would be hard put to do without. (I know that because I've crossed a picket line during a nurse's strike and had many physicians shake my hand and thank me for being there. Still, even with other nurses replacing the strikers, the physicians had to put elected surgeries on hold and their income dropped.) Nurses are caught between hospital admin, nurse managers, patients at their worse, crazy families, and other stressed out nurses. Unlike most of you, they can't escape out of the box until their shift is over. Yes, it saddens me to see some of these stupid comments, but why post them where other nurses and the general public can see them? It undermines what little confidence they already have in physicians and nurses. I may be wrong but I don't think allnurses would allow the same type of thread. I also think most threads here are about helping other people with their questions. I'm just saying give nurses a break. Ask a psychiatrist if he thinks this is a productive thread.
 
surrender903 said:
So can you provide examples of what you are referring to? You said that as physicians we need to utilize electricity and that as a non physician healthcare practitioner make you a popular person away from the restraints of modern civilization. Would you mind so I can better practice medicine without the restraints of electricity to elucidate?
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You guys might run with the big dogs but I play with the big cats, lol! (This critter is not drugged, nor am I). I'm talking about going into the jungle with nothing but your brains, whatever skills you have, and no meds or any other equipment. Yes, I'm a male nurse with both psych and acute care experience, as well as a Zen Shiatsu therapist and a shaman (Q'ero lineage). Sorry, but the deck was stacked in my favor. I just like to play with you young guys as it keeps me sharp. :D

I like physicians and in 37 years have only run into about three that needed new careers.

Don't taste the urine, just pour some on a rock and see what the ants do.

Great that some of you do OMT.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!
 
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zenman said:
The big picture is that you are the top medical professionals making fun of another group of professionals who you would be hard put to do without. (I know that because I've crossed a picket line during a nurse's strike and had many physicians shake my hand and thank me for being there. Still, even with other nurses replacing the strikers, the physicians had to put elected surgeries on hold and their income dropped.) Nurses are caught between hospital admin, nurse managers, patients at their worse, crazy families, and other stressed out nurses. Unlike most of you, they can't escape out of the box until their shift is over. Yes, it saddens me to see some of these stupid comments, but why post them where other nurses and the general public can see them? It undermines what little confidence they already have in physicians and nurses. I may be wrong but I don't think allnurses would allow the same type of thread. I also think most threads here are about helping other people with their questions. I'm just saying give nurses a break. Ask a psychiatrist if he thinks this is a productive thread.
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Fair enough, it doesn't make physicians look good. But that wasn't your initial objection to the thread. Your objection, at least as posted here, was that why is this thread allowed but nurses aren't allowed to bitch about physicians and why wasn't a thread where we complained about other specialties.

And you are wrong about allnurses.com. I have seen very similar threads there venting about physicians, about techs, about other nurses, etc.

People need a place to vent their frustrations. Only the most ignorant physician (or student) would claim that they didn't need nurses and other allied health professionals. It is ridiculous to think otherwise. We all work together toward a common goal. However, we've all been in situations where we are frustrated and faced with ignorance that makes our job harder. Some of the pages we get are ridiculous.

Would it be better if this thread was hidden from public view? Perhaps. That was the reason we "hid" the Internship thread - it was bombarded with posts from nurses bitching about interns. Hiding it allowed Interns to discuss topics without being trolled on a daily basis.

SDN users have to patrol their own posts. We are all adults and it is not our responsibility to protect users or the public from content here or what the public might think about physicians. I spend every day in the office and the operating room showing my co-workers, patients and families that those attitudes are misguided.

SDN was not designed as the public face of physicians but rather as a site for physicians and other medical professionals. There is no doubt that because of its popularity the general public and nurses will read what is written here. I cannot speak for other staff members but I have no interest in censoring what is written here so that everything makes physicians look rosy.
 
zenman said:
You guys might run with the big dogs but I play with the big cats, lol! (This critter is not drugged, nor am I). I'm talking about going into the jungle with nothing but your brains, whatever skills you have, and no meds or any other equipment. Yes, I'm a male nurse with both psych and acute care experience, as well as a Zen Shiatsu therapist and a shaman (Q'ero lineage). Sorry, but the deck was stacked in my favor. I just like to play with you young guys as it keeps me sharp. :D
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How does boasting that you can practice medicine with your bare hands and no other tools improve the public's faith in nurses? :confused:

I think that most patients worry that you can't use the tools that you have properly, and don't worry too much about the hypothetical "OMG what if I were in the jungle right now? Would my doctor/nurse know what to do??"
 
Thats comparing apples to oranges. Most of us have chosen to practice western medicine exclusively. So if you're going to compare settings in which one can practice medicine using only their brain and their hands, you have to restrict it to western medicine. Otherwise, you're comparing apples to oranges.

Whats the purpose of convincing a western 1st world physician that they'd be lost in a technologically reduced third world practice? The same holds true for a physician who's trained in the third world, or southeast Asia if they were to practice in a large tertiary care hospital in New York City.

Medical technology brings about its own ways of thinking, dilemmas, paradigms, principles, etc. We choose to concern ourselves with pretest and posttest probabilities, False positives and False negatives, and the unique issues of robotic surgery, and the finer details of the correspondence of anatomy and pathology to a radiologic image, and zapping cancer cells with radiation.

You're not convincing anyone that you're better for being able to practice traditional medicine. Youre different, thats all. We chose to practice western medicine, and we appreciate the intellectual challenge that technology brings.

Having to practice medicine without those challenges is a different ball of wax entirely, something that we prefer not to do. Not because its better or worse, but because its different, and we want those challenges.

Im not saying that we all made volitional decisions about technology in medicine, but at one level or another we do chose how much we want to concern ourselves with what we consider esoteric topics when we choose our specialties. And it runs the spectrum from psych and Family practice to Radiation Oncology. And even within a specialty, some individuals are more interested in those things than others.
 
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Remember my reply to jdh71's wisecrack?

"Let's step into the jungle where there is no equipment (bare hands) or electricity and have us a clinic. I'll bet the line to me will be longer than the line to you."

I didn't set any parameters other than the above so just suck it up. And try to relax....
 
zenman said:
Great that some of you do OMT.
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I don't use OMT. That's not what I meant by a DO student using his/her hands.:rolleyes:

Palpatory skills.
 
zenman said:
Let's step into the jungle where there is no equipment (bare hands) or electricity and have us a clinic. I'll bet the line to me will be longer than the line to you.
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Hmm... the two times I've gone into the jungle with nothing more than the stuff we could pack in, the line for our clinic was about 400 people a day (lots of people for the eight doctor group), 50 of which were mine to see. So I guess I can only claim the fifty per day.
 
zenman said:
...You guys might run with the big dogs but I play with the big cats, lol! (This critter is not drugged, nor am I). I'm talking about going into the jungle with nothing but your brains, whatever skills you have, and no meds or any other equipment. Yes, I'm a male nurse with both psych and acute care experience, as well as a Zen Shiatsu therapist and a shaman (Q'ero lineage). Sorry, but the deck was stacked in my favor. I just like to play with you young guys as it keeps me sharp. :D...
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My the three vests in chinpoko style of elbowless aura vibration allow me to use quantum-entanglement theory, on the parsec level, to transmute one's jib-ports, as shown in ancient Sumerian texts, allowing for greater potentiality-reality merging. Guaranteed enhanced results in 30 minutes or get your chi back (I can teach you, but I'd have to charge).

No medications, no electricity, no hands, no skills, no brains, heck, even geographic proximity isn't required - as I can set up a situation where nobody could heal anything, and only my moral flexibility and snake-oil salesmanship would differentiate me from those who could really heal the sick.*

*I also have natural, unregulated herbal supplements that I can't promise will cure you, but will heal your common cold, rhinitis, cancer, hives, headache, allergies. For only six easy installments of $29.95.
 
zenman said:
You already failed when you agreed to a dare without checking out your opponent. Always do that first.:D
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This statement makes no sense. You're a bitter NP with a chip in his shoulder contributing nothing to the conversation in here other than your own extraneous and absurd objections to the specific content.

You can use this one: Medicine: the science of preventing, diagnosing, alleviating, or curing disease. I'll bet in your daily rounds you consult a lot of lab and other data which you can only obtain with the use of electricity. While you might have a lot of information in your head you might be a little limited with your bare hands. I, on the other hand have training in using my hands and other senses which will (and has) made me a popular person away from civilization. And that's not all in my bag, so to speak....
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If you want to have a contest of "preventing, diagnosing, alleviating, or curing disease" without any tools or meds, then I'd take that challenge any day of the week. It has nothing to do with not "checking out my oppenent", and everything to do with the fact if all we have are our 5 sense and out minds, then there is NOTHING you can do I cannot.

You showed up here trolling this thread and I trolled back, and in predictable fashion you did what I would expect of any troll. Don't be so butthurt, and don't take it so personal everyone (at lleast everyone who is not an idiot) appeciates his nurses. Everyone has a place in the medical system and all are needed in order to take care of patients. Nurses sometimes page physicians with stupid crap, and doctors sometime write stupid orders - it's fun and cathartic to write about them here with our shared experience. It not personal and it's anonymous. No one gets singled out. So there is no reason to be indignant or flex your e-penis. It only makes you look like a tool.
 
Was viewing this thread while my patient was in the CT scanner. The nurse and RT that had come with also looked at it and they both wondered how the nurses responsible for the calls they read about were able to pass their boards. Then they laughed. No one got offended, no one cried. They realize there are some people in any profession that make the rest look bad. You can laugh at those without condemning the entire specialty. Just like I can laugh about the consults that I consider stupid without thinking that everyone in specialty X is worthless.

Can we get back to funny stories please. I would post one, but after working night float this entire week I haven't gotten one call that I feel was worthy of this thread (some calls that would have been better made in the morning, but nothing extreme and I'm up anyway roaming the hospital being fed by my wonderful colleagues)
 
I'm going to ignore the douche who is attempting to derail this thread with non-sensical garbage and focus on funny nursing stories:

Not my story but a fellow resident's encounter:

MD: please give KCl 40meq x 3 for patient X
RN: The patient said he's allergic to Potassium so we can't give it to him

My resident thought to himself "just because the patient's ******ed, doesn't mean you, as a nurse, should be too"
 
EternalMD said:
I'm going to ignore the douche who is attempting to derail this thread with non-sensical garbage and focus on funny nursing stories:

Not my story but a fellow resident's encounter:

MD: please give KCl 40meq x 3 for patient X
RN: The patient said he's allergic to Potassium so we can't give it to him

My resident thought to himself "just because the patient's ******ed, doesn't mean you, as a nurse, should be too"
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My personal favorites were patients who would say they were allergic to epinephrine because "It makes my heart race," or say they were allergic to "All antibiotics." We had a few people who wound up with three allergy bracelets because of all of their allergies.
 
fab4fan said:
My personal favorites were patients who would say they were allergic to epinephrine because "It makes my heart race," or say they were allergic to "All antibiotics." We had a few people who wound up with three allergy bracelets because of all of their allergies.
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My favorite when I was a paramedic. "Im allergic to Narcan"
 
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