the wet floor sign

A few summers ago I was at a gathering of work friends when this story came out...

One of the patients in the hospital that week had a massive hernia, it really was quite large and made his abdomen very round and distended. His doctor, a surgeon, decides he is going to try and put the hernia back in. Fine. However, manipulating a hernia of that size, with the patient simply in his room in bed, combined with the Dr's method of choice - applying pressure to the hernia with a wet floor sign was not the best idea. Patient died. I was not there, and as shocking as that sounds, I do believe it actually happened. Unfortunately as I was not there, I could not even report this story to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Other head shakes this Dr. does include eight hour gall-bladder surgeries, small mole removal under anesthetic for elderly people, long-term IV's (over 10 bags of fluid) and catheters (5+ days for c-sections), no eating for days after surgery. It may sound minor, but day after day these things really get old, especially when you know they should be done differently, and there is no reasoning with this Dr.

Apparently he is nicer to me than he usually is to new grad nurses, so hopefully I can use that to my patients advantage. And he'll retire/get fired soon (fingers crossed).

I always got the 'crazy' patients...

In my second year of nursing school a friend and I began to notice that I always had what we liked to call the 'crazy' patients...

The mom who tried cocaine for the first time a few days before her scheduled C-Section. The asthmatic patient with a mom, grandma and twelve-year-old brother who all smoked in the house. The tattoed and pierced moms with 8 kids.

But along with the abundance of these types of patients, I also had a lot that were quite memorable in a touching way. The lady who didn't know I was coming, but let me in anyways. The terrified lady going for a breast biopsy. The elderly couple whose wife never left his side. The funny lady slowly losing her hair. The mom who delivered twins naturally - a rare feat these days. The boy with a great attitude despite his 'crazy' family. The class of junior high kids. The PD patient with attitude. The tourist patient who used a computer to translate 'ouch.' (Apparently its not a universal word).

Regardless of their 'crazy' status or not, these are the people who shaped my nursing education.