Please Swallow It

The patient was NPO, meaning that she wasn't allowed anything by mouth. She wanted to know if it was okay to swallow her saliva. I told her that not only was it okay to swallow, but that we would prefer it.



In our medical administration record, the pharmacy adds notes for the nurses to remember when administering certain drugs to patients in the hospital. I saw an interesting one tonight. It said not to administer with alcohol. Huh? Do they think we're running a bar here?



There are some nurses who, whenever they chart their assessments on Caucasian patients, will write that the patient's skin is pale. This drives me crazy. Of course their skin is pale. They're white. What they should be looking at is the patient's mucous membranes to see if they are pale and therefore likely to be anemic. What they are charting by implication is that all white people look anemic and all people of color look like they have good blood counts. One of these days, I'm going to start crossing off "pale skin" every time I see it and writing next to it, Caucasian skin. Am I being too picky?



No other floor in the hospital had a private room available, so we got the patient that no one else wanted. Why did he need a private room? Was it because he was infectious? No. Was he a VIP? No. He was just stinky. So, why didn't they just wash him? They could have wheeled him out to the driveway and hosed him off. With a dose of versed he wouldn't have remembered a thing. Things would be different if I was in charge.