Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Doctor Doctor!

Here on vacation, thoughts flow much more freely over drinks. My surgical intern friend and I spent half an hour describing the annoying text pages we get in the middle of the night, all regarding very important -- rather: "important" -- topics. (Note: this is not meant to ridicule or take a swipe at nurses. It is how we amuse ourselves to get through the misery of this year.)
  • Doctor doctor, please change Colace order from tid to bid. (really, this needs to be done at 4am?!)
  • Doctor doctor, FYI: pt's blood sugar is 78, pt asymptomatic. (don't ever again page me to tell me pt is asymptomatic)
  • Doctor doctor, pt's systolic blood pressure is 85, shall I give metoprolol? (no, which is why I wrote parameters to hold if SBP<90)
  • Doctor doctor, pt is nauseous, please write for Zofran. (who are you? what pt is this for? how about a callback number?)
  • Doctor doctor, pt doesn't feel well. please advise! (yup, we've gotten these!)
 Luckily, laughing helps wash away the tears.

4 comments:

MedStudentGod (MSG) said...

I've often heard that you get paged and for more stupid shit if a nurse doesn't like you. Is that true? Or do some nurses have to have constant direction?

Amir said...

medstudentgod -- absolutely true. if nurses don't like you, they can make your life miserable. case in point: a co-intern was quite rude to a nurse when we were on call in the ICU, and to repay the favor the nurse paged my co-intern to confirm EVERY order that night. that will further ruin any call night. which is another reason why you should befriend the nurses (in addition to it being good common sense that you should be nice to people.)

Anonymous said...

Yes, but it also happens that if the nurses like you, they feel comfortable calling to just chat about the patients. Which is fine with me, except at 2am.

Actually, those pointless pages, during the daytime, are not too bad. They're like a "get out of jail free" card - you call, and find no job waiting for you on the other end.

Anonymous said...

lol, memories, sweet sweet memories.