Minty Fresh Bottoms

My excuse was that I wasn't wearing my reading glasses. I don't know what the excuse was for the nurse who handed me the bottle. At least she was wearing her glasses. Anyway, what happened is that I washed diarrhea off of someone's bottom with mouthwash. It made the patient very unhappy. Minty fresh bottoms are not a good thing.

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The shift usually starts out with an argument. Today's argument was over staffing. We were told that one of our patients wasn't to be counted in calculating the nurse to patient ratios. Yes, it's true that the patient was dead, but still, one of the nurses had to be assigned to the dead patient.

In spite of being dead, dead patients are quite a bit of work. The paperwork is heavy and we were expecting family to come and view the body. I can't believe that anyone would argue that dead people aren't to be counted in the census. But I guess if the staffing is illegal, people will argue anything they can think of to make the staffing legal, at least on paper.

I am curious, though. California's law is that there must be one nurse for every five patients. I wonder if it's okay to assign more patients if some of them are dead? :)