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Monthly Archives: August 2008
Apple Leaf Poultice
The elderly black woman’s blood pressure had been dangerously elevated. While I was checking her vitals for one of many times that shift, she looked up at me hesitantly. “If I tell you something, will you do it for me?” she asked. “What is it?” I replied. “Go out yonder,” she said, pointing at the midnight sky outside her fifth floor hospital room window, “and get some leaves offa dem apple trees. Make a poultice of ‘em, and sprinkle on some salt to pull da juice outta da leaves. Put … Continue reading
Posted in Nursing, Parallel Universes
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A Growing Problem
An ambulance technician in Scotland, in his post Fat Chance, has finally (and beautifully) put into words some of the frustration I’ve felt so many times when working with obese patients: Morbid obesity is dangerous, hence the moniker, but in the emergency situation it’s not the ischaemic heart disease that causes the problems, nor the diabetes, cellulitis or dyspnoea. It’s just the weight. If we can’t lift you when you can’t walk, you’re not going anywhere. Bravo. It’s not that we don’t like you because you’re fat. It’s just so … Continue reading
Insight
There are cameras in the patient rooms on our psych units. The images they produce are tiny, black and white, and grainy. (That’s not really by design; they’re just very old, and they aren’t broken, so there’s no reason to replace them.) They don’t show much detail — just enough to allow us to keep an eye on people who might be liable to hang themselves with a bed sheet or try to dance naked on one foot on the back of a plastic chair. No, I didn’t just randomly … Continue reading
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HIPAA, HIPAA, Hooray for Bureaucracy!
We were getting a new patient on the psych unit. This person had been picked up by the police with no ID, psychotic and mute. We were informed we couldn’t admit them as J___ Doe, which was the name the police had given them, because that would reveal their gender, thereby violating their privacy. The admitting office, therefore, assigned them the name “Tangerine Doe.” What I still can’t figure out is exactly who we were trying not to reveal this person’s gender to, and why? Even if I yelled from … Continue reading
Posted in Nursing
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