#nurse rants

[nurserants]

When a patient comes in & you realize they googled their current situation...

I was doing an orthopedic case last week & the case was booked for intramedullary nailing right femur. So for those of you who don’t get the pros of IM nail in opposed to an ORIF, an IM nail allows the patient to literally walk the next day & they recover quickly with less complications. So the patient came in & all of a sudden, he’s the doctor. He said he googled the procedure & that he wouldn’t benefit from it. 

Oh, I’m sorry did you not look at your x-ray? Your fracture has been properly reduced for an IM nail & it’s not healing properly. Once the IM nail, rod, goes through your femur, it’ll disrupt your improper healing & cause a reaction of the osteoblasts in the bone to create new bone formation so you’d have better healing. 

So my surgeon kept trying to convince him that he’d benefit more from an IM nail but he googled it and didn’t like it and he preferred an ORIF. OMG. We started the case & did an x-ray & even I was like, OMG IF HE CHOSE AN IM NAIL OUR CASE WOULD HAVE FINISHED IN 30 MINUTES OR LESS. It was perfectly reduced! But naw, we have to go with the patient’s wishes. 

[nurserants]

Foreign body removal - cystoscopy, male patient...

So I’ve had so many weird cases working in surgery, but I haven’t really posted about stuff like this. We get fractured penises and like today, foreign body inside the penis. 

I remember when I first started at my hospital and the patient I received was an in-mate from prison and he stuck a pencil in his penis. Okay first his medical history was he’s schizophrenic so he hears voices to tell him to do those things. He would come back multiple times with things inside his penis - i.e. pens, pencils, magnet etc. Last time I saw him it was a styrofoam. He went in for a cystoscopy, foreign body removal & once the surgeon went in, the styrofoam already traveled through his urethra and into the bladder. So, we cancelled the rest of the case and put him in recovery and rescheduled him in an hour for an exploratory laparotomy. The 2nd we opened his bladder - the styrofoam literally floated up and our case was done in an hour. 

Now today, I get a patient, whom I feel awful for because he has a history of a prostatectomy & he “googled” how to reposition his mesh sling in his prostate & one of the suggestions was sticking a long object through your urethra. HE CHOSE A PEN. I don’t know if it was a blue or black ink, but it was a regular sized pen that all nurses aren’t willing to lose at work. We were able to retrieve it, but man...seriously. /end rant.

[nurserants]

Traumas on the weekends...for real...

[nurserants]

You can ignore this rant...

So this week has been tough. I arrived at work & was assigned to trauma on Tuesday, April 18th. When I got to trauma, I noticed that the portion where we place dead bodies was occupied. Of course, I was curious but it’s a HIPAA violation to look to see who the patient was. 

So, I ignored it and I had a trauma case to do. It was a medically necessary procedure, the patient just came in from an MVA & he was intubated. We did a left orbital repair & ORIF of his left distal radius. In the middle of the case, my surgical tech was relieved by another one of our co-workers. Our co-worker walked into the room and she came up to me. She said our anesthesiologist back at the main OR came into the office & told everyone that our head plastic surgeon just died from an accident this morning while riding his bike & he was sent to our hospital where he succumbed to his injuries...

So you know where I’m heading with this...

It was so sad because I actually saw his accident in the news that morning, but his identity wasn’t released. And, I came into the realization that the body in our trauma bay was his. 

Well...R.I.P. TO OUR PLASTIC SURGEON. His death was horrible. His head was crushed because he lost control of his bike & hit a large tour bus. I feel horrible for his family, since his wife is battling stage 4 colon cancer & they have two young teenagers. Just goes to show how short life is and how precious time is. I’m going through my own issues with this. I’ve learned to really appreciate everyone in my life.

[nurserants]

My spine surgeon when he takes like 30 min to hours break during the operation while the patient is still cut open & in a prone position.

His 2 level spine surgery can take up to 6 hours just because of his breaks. He always looks at the clock. It was a miracle when he had a 13 level spine surgery and he finished that in 8 hours because he knew he wouldn’t get a good surgical technician who knows his preference LOL. 

[nurserants]

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Posted by My Social Practice on Monday, November 23, 2015