Stupidity....

Had a great time playing tennis today with Son. What a wonderful way to "let go" of the agression that has been eating away at your insides. I'm most aggressive when bouncing the ball off the wall. WHACK!!!! WHACK!!! Ahhhhh, nothing feels quite as good as hitting the ball so hard that your teeth feel the impact. What does this have to do with stupidity?? First of all, it has to do with my own stupidity for renting my MH to my in-law (see previous post.) More importantly, it has to do with the stupidity of some of my co-workers. This includes nurses, CNA's, doctors, lab technicians, radiology techs.... and the list goes on.

First story to come to mind is one that happened a few months ago. Patient had a thyroplasty due to a paralyzed vocal cord. Of course, there are airway concerns due to the procedure, but this was even more so due to the gentleman's size. I'm talking nearly 500 pounds of barely breathing flesh here people. O2 sats are sucking (anywhere from 75% to 96% on 10 LPM humidified O2 via face tent) but the guy is alert and oriented. So far so good... Ask our aide to get me a trach tray, better safe than sorry is my motto. After questioning me about it, I finally get my point across and she gets the tray. So, I keep the guy in PACU to watch him for about 45 minutes or so. O2 sats improving (anywhere from 86-96% now.) He meets criteria for discharge to day surgery so here we go.

I push the (heavy) stretcher back to his day surgery room, hook the O2 up as ordered (see above) and proceed to give report. As a general rule of thumb, I always review the MD's orders with the receiving nurse. So the orders state "ice chips only until I re-check." What does Nurse Stupid do?? She asks the patient what he would like to drink! Even offers him Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, juice, etc. I am astounded!!! The patient's wife is astounded!! Needless to say, the nurse was promptly corrected.

Another case of blatent stupidity occurred when Nurse Dummy gave a 2 month old infant a bottle of pedialyte in the PACU right after GI surgery. Boy, was that MD ticked off. (He had a right to be.) He made a huge scene in the PACU in front of all the nurses and the patients! Even the patients had looks of horror on their faces when they saw the tantrum he threw. (I think he would have been better off the have addressed the situation in a different manner as one of the patients was his very own. She couldn't believe that kind old Doctor would act in such a terrible fashion.)

To wrap this post up, maybe Doctor should imagine Nurse Dummy's face on that tennis ball and whack the crap out of it. I know I put a few faces on my tennis balls today!