Mystery Machine
The patient wanted a heating pad for his feet. A heating pad requires a doctor's order, so the nurses kept making homemade hot-packs for his feet. He wasn't happy, so tired of his complaints, his nurse called a doctor and got an order for a heating pad.
That thing in the picture is what was delivered to us. The green thing is the pad and that big machine heats the pad, we think. It was totally unlike any heating pad any of us had ever seen, but that's what we got so we were going to make the best of it.
The nurse wheeled it into the room and the patient wanted to know what it was. The nurse answered that it was his heating pad. He suddenly decided that his feet were no longer cold and insisted that the machine be removed from his room.
Although annoyed, we were also relieved because we had no idea how to work the machine and I'm still not sure it was really a heating pad. Has anyone ever seen a heating pad like this or did the store-room make a mistake and send us some strange mystery machine?
Written by Melissa on 12:43 AM
Me
Melissa blogging from sunny Santa Clarita, Southern California, United States.
Friends
7 Comments:
i'm not sure if it works as a heating blanket, but we use it all the time as a cooling blanket. you fill that green thing with water, (or somewhere in the machine. i have never started this thing, i susually just get a patient already on it, so i don't remember exactly where you put the water) connect it to the machine, and set the temperature to how much you want it. it comes with a rectal probe that continuously monitors the patient's temperature. the screen says what your target temp is and what the current temp of the blanket is. i am assuming it also works as a heating blanket, because all you have to do is increase the temperature set up for it to warm up. and if i remember correctly, we do use it as a heating blanket in our ICUs.
I guess the next thing will be one of these for home use, designed for a cold winter's night. It will be a full sized blanket, and the user will just stick the probe in himself or herself, adjust the temperature setting, and fall off to a blissful sleep.
I wonder if the patient somehow knew (insert Twilight Zone theme music here) that there was a rectal probe (shudder) involved.
Tardis!
LOL, Michelle! Do they have that in Oz, too?
May, I told my coworkers about the rectal probe attachment and we were all bent-over double laughing.
Gary, well, that is the best way to maintain an optimum temperature. I wonder if we should suggest that to Sunbeam.
Irene, judging from his reaction to the machine, he must have had some kind of gut instinct that something very bad was going to happen.
Michelle, that went above my head.
Michelle's talking about a doctor. "Dr. Who?" you ask.
Exactly.
Post a Comment
<< Home