5 Unhelpful People You Meet in Every Hospital
It takes a special kind of person to watch people scream and bleed for 12 hours at a time. I'm not sure if hospitals are good at finding those people, or if working at a hospital turns you into one. But you don't really understand these people until you're there, in pain and at their mercy.
I found this out recently, when my girlfriend's appendix exploded. We live together, so it's not one of those cases where I could just send some flowers and wait for her to let me know she was back home. We share everything -- same house, same vehicle, same bills, and when one of us gets sick, same hospital room (for those of you who care, she's doing fine now).
Except now, everything she sees is Prince.
But during the hospital stay, we encountered members of the staff who had each advanced to some different stage of total apathy. Also, they were all named Lori. I'm convinced that they're all named that, all over the world. It might be spelled differently from Lori to Laurie, but each of them are in your hospital right now, fucking something up.
If you've been to the hospital recently, see if you recognize ...
#5.
One-Job Lori
We met this one at registration. We had been in the emergency room for about an hour when she walked in with a rolling computer cart that I immediately recognized would be a perfect World of Warcraft mobile command center. Just wheel that shit right into the bathroom and punch hotkeys from the shower. I made a mental note to steal it later.
Via K-log.com
Anyway, my girlfriend, who we'll call Emily for the purposes of this account, was so out of breath from screaming and crying that she couldn't speak for herself. So I would have to speak for her.
I told Lori that over the last 10 minutes or so, Emily's pain had grown tenfold, that it seemed like an appendix situation or maybe a tiny elf she swallowed was now trying to shoot his way out. So you know, we could really use someone down here right away to at least try to get that pain under control. Lori looked at me in a way that made me think she was going to reply in Russian, and said instead, "I'm just here to get some registration information."
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"We'll be with you as soon as you scream your information to Lori."
I focused all of my frustration into a very violent sigh and said, "Sure, I understand. However, she should have been on the road to the hospital an hour before we finally did. It's a 35 minute drive. Then once we got here, she's been laying in this bed, unseen by anyone at all for over an hour. If you can't get someone in here yourself, at least point me in the right direction so I can."
She then promptly ignored everything I just said and started asking Emily about her address and insurance information.
Yes, Lori, we'll gladly give you the information you need. We'll give you so much goddamned information, your computer will need a new hard drive. You'll be able to ghost write Emily's fucking biography and option the film rights. Just ask for it while in the presence of a nurse who is pushing the plunger on a syringe full of morphine. Fuck, at that point, we would have settled for crack. But I go around asking the people in the waiting room for crack and suddenly I'm the unreasonable one.
Via Wikimedia Commons
Medicine.
Is there some great reason why pain medication can't be administered while waiting for the doctor to get free? Maybe. Probably, even. But if so, that information wouldn't be coming from Lori. Not her job.
Don't misunderstand my point here; I know that Lori sees dozens upon dozens of people every day who think they're the experts. And I know she gets worried family members barking orders at her, and she's learned to just let that roll off of her back. But ... doesn't the pain still count for something? In a hospital? Isn't there some kind of primal sympathy that kicks in at the sight of another member of the species writhing and screaming in pain? I try to think about how much screaming you have to hear before you become completely numb to it.
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I'm guessing a long, long time.
This is my first hint of just how much it sucks to stand on either side of Lori's computer cart.
#4.
Forgetful Lori
It turns out the appendix did in fact rupture.
Luckily for us, it held together until surgery, so it was easier to control the disaster than if it had happened an hour earlier. That was what kept Emily from having to spend a week in the hospital fighting off infection. The downside is that once the surgery was over, we were stuck with our second Lori.
Or maybe this one was spelled Lorrie. Either way, she was the one administering the pain medication, and the way she explained it was that the I.V. stuff was the most powerful and would kick the pain's ass. Or there was a pill that didn't do quite as much. So Emily chose the more powerful of the two. That's one of those non-choices -- like choosing between cold pills or "Maximum Strength" cold pills that are the same price. Why the shit would anyone want less relief? So for a full day, that's what they kept her on.
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We paid her an extra 20 to slip a little vodka in there.
They had told us that she would most likely be released the following morning, so when that time came around, Lori entered and told us that we had to stay a second night. Wait, what? Why? Because we chose the I.V.
Lori told us that before Emily went home, she had to be on the pill form of the meds, and had to walk a whole bunch up and down the hall. Oh. Well, thanks for fucking letting us know that now instead of 24 hours ago, Lori. Is there any other treatment we should guess for ourselves? Are you going to come back tomorrow and tell us that we have to stay another night because Emily forgot to write the required goodbye speech that you never told us about?
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Leaving is kind of a big deal there.
We asked her to bring us the pills. "OK, I'll be back in about five minutes." She came back two hours later with a pillow for the woman in the next bed. We asked about the pills, and she said, "OH! I'm sorry, I'll be right back with those!" Thirty minutes later, Emily was hitting the "Call Nurse" button like a coked-up spider monkey playing Contra.
Lori heeded that call 15 minutes later, and when she walked in, she asked in a pleasant voice, "Did you need something?" By this point, Emily was nearly immobile. Even sitting up in bed caused so much pain, it brought her to tears. It suddenly came to the nurse that there was something she was supposed to be doing here, now what was that?
"Oh, my gosh, I am so sorry! I'll get those pills to you right now."
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"But first ..."
From the time we asked for them until the time they went into my girlfriend's face hole, four hours had passed. Again, I understand that Lori is busy. We live in a small town, so we don't have an enormous hospital with an abundant staff. But goddammit, one of her main jobs is to keep up with her patients' medications. So barring the switch to the pills, it would have at least been time for some sort of medication in that four hour time-frame. Right?
The next time Emily's meds were an hour past due, I tracked her down behind the front desk, spreading gossip about how shitty someone's birthday party was. That's when I realized that the Lori situation was actually worse than I thought. To us, this is a major life crisis. To the Loris, we're just white noise -- a background buzz that occasionally complains. When we leave, some other crying, complaining couple will take our place.
#3.
Everyone Gets Meatloaf Lori
It turns out that our lunch person was another Lori, I think this one was Laurie, or maybe Lauree. On the first day, she brought Emily a menu and asked her to fill it out. We did, and The Lunchmaster disappeared in a pillar of flames. Thirty minutes later, she reappeared with another menu. We explained that we had filled one out already, and she said that one was for lunch, but this one was for the evening. Oh. We felt stupid and filled that one out, too. She praised Satan, unfolded her wings and flew off down the hall -- a trail of fluttering bats in her wake.
So Emily's lunch arrived, and just like clockwork, The Lunchmaster Lori appeared with yet another menu. We asked what that one was for, and she said, "Tomorrow's lunch." OK, well, there's always a chance that we might have to stay another day from some unforeseen complication. We filled it out. Then Emily looked down at her lunch and noticed it was the exact opposite of what she ordered.
"Wait, this isn't what I wrote down on my menu."
"Oh," The Lunchmaster said in a rumbling, demonic voice. "I never got a menu from you, so we just sent up the regular stuff."
What? We handed you the menu, personally. We don't expect you to remember every single patient in the hospital, but you made a special trip up here, and we put the fucking thing in your hand. You didn't have a giant pile of them. It was the only menu in your possession.
"I made it myself. You should eat it while I watch."
Regardless, Emily just ate the meatloaf because we were pretty sure that whatever she brought up would also be meatloaf. There's a point in Lori's life where, fuck it, everybody gets meatloaf.
The problem is that there is such a huge disconnect between patients and healthcare professionals. Patients seldom understand exactly how busy and how stressed out their nurses are, and we (nurses) have been doing this for so long and have seen so much that we forget how scary and strange it is to be in a hospital as a patient. A lot of people commented below about good hospital experiences and bad ones, and I would guess that a lot of that has to do with how each of those hospital administrations work. A well functioning hospital makes for happy nurses who can do their jobs well; a poor one makes for patients experiences like the one in this article.
ReplyThe nurse button is for pussies. Seriously, I never say "x is for pussies", but this is one of them. It's like having your wife or grandma run out and grab nurses to help your boo-boo. That's how I know NONE of the a*****e contingent in here has really suffered any *serious* life-threatening issues. If you had, you'd know the nurses have little 007 toys that somehow know when something is REALLY wrong. But to degrade "Lori" in the same breath you're laying on the Nurse button is a contradiction that's above you. I know you were doing it for Emily, but I can see the conversation: "Hey Lori, the doctor doesn't need to know I'm on morphine. Jack it up---I hear serious felonies are great advancement opportunities for nurses these days." Lori- "Yeah yeah, why does your boyfriend keep begging for YOUR morphine?" Emily- "My tummy hurts so bad!!" Lori- "In that case it's a good thing you chose 'Hospital' over 'Titanic 3D' then. Any advice for my stocks for tomorrow??"
ReplySeriously, nurses? Such an easy target; that's lame enough. Then to fire at that target because you didn't know doctors prescribe medication? I mean...what?? Try it again, only without the Nurse button...
The comment below by cloudhidden reminds me I forgot to check the author. Cheese can usually turn s**t articles like this into 2-3 good LOLs.
Again, because I still can't grasp it: Nurses can't prescribe medication? Like, you mean to say that they have veto power over the doctor based on the level of whining? Using morphine to illustrate how out of control this is? At least Johnny's thugs chasing Daniel-san in skeleton outfits had some entertainment value. I've never used these words in a sentence before, but practice harder next time you decide to pick a prey as fierce as the nurse.
Ok, I am trying very hard to resist my instinct to become defensive. A lot of nurses have commented and tried to defend the nurses in this article, which is pointless, but of course the commentors are really defending themselves. That is what a person who is a member of a group that is being overgeneralized in a very derogatory way will have as a first reaction, and especially when the whole thing seems to be very one-sided. It is difficult to read something like this if you do actually care about people, don't live in a constant self-pity party, love your job, and try to do it right. But I guess what I'm really mad about is the people who are this cruel and horrible at their jobs and feed the ridiculous and damaging stereotypes about nursing. Regardless, it is such a sore subject. The profession's entire history is entrenched with a lot of class and gender issues, and then there's all the death, pain and suffering and so everybody's emotions are just raw. And then there's all the money talk and political stuff now which also gets everyone all riled up. And then there's the fact that John Cheese is my favorite writer on cracked, and now I'm pretty bummed and wish I would have clicked on some other article that would have been clever and amusing like what he usually writes.
ReplyNot every hospital is as awful as the one in this article. When I had to have surgery last December and stayed in the hospital for a few days, the nurses were actually quite nice. And my food orders were never screwed up. The anesthesiologist, on the other hand, seemed like she was trying to make me as crazy as possible ("How much do you weigh?" "215 lbs." "195?" "No, 215." "No, you don't." She didn't get a scale or anything; just "no". It went downhill from there.)
ReplyGranted, I've also been in terrible hospitals (e.g. with residents who thought looking at a chart outside my room was the same as actually seeing me, and who put bandages on as sloppily as possible and tried to blame me for pulling it off, while I was fully conscious right in front of them), but I've never had to deal with any of the types of people mentioned in this article.
I read a nonfiction book by a Chechen doctor who moved to the US after helping the wounded during the war. The very first part of the book was an extended rant about the time he went to the hospital with a stomach ailment and had to put up with the hospital farting around about how he was going to pay them before they bothered treating him. Even during the war that attitude would have been unthinkable back home. IIRC at some point he got so pissed off he started trying to order the nurses to bring him tubes and s**t so he could patch up his own damn self.
ReplyNot to put too fine a point on it, but if the First Chechen War is considered a better environment to have a life-threatening illness in, you might want to consider a single-payer system.
I just recently had the Lori-Who-Just-Don't-Give-A-Fuck when I smashed up my face a week ago.
ReplyI broke my nose at 9:30pm and arrived at the hospital at about 10:15. I had managed to clean the blood off my face but it was swelling like a b***h and my lip soon grew to the size of a small child. It was my first time to the hospital, so I had to ask where to go.
Lori at the front desk told me to move it along to Lori at the nurse's station, who then proceeded to tell me to sit the f**k down and wait my turn. After a time, I managed to get a pill for the pain from nurse Lori. For the record, the waiting room had about 5 other people in it, none of whom had a goddamn bleeding bruise for a face. It's cool. I get it, I don't come first. But the family who was just there for some panadol for their kid and the guy with the sprained wrist (which had already been taken care of) and the woman who was there for a random pregnancy checkup in the middle of the night could conceivably have waited. I was in goddamn agony.
At 12am I was finally seen by a second nurse, who gave me morphine for the pain since the first tablet hadn't done a goddamn thing. She also gave me a tetanus shot for some reason, even though my last one was like a year ago. But whatever.
At 1am I was finally blessed with the presence of a doctor, who cleaned out my face-wound and stuck tape on it to hold my nose together, told me to wait 5 minutes while he went to process my paperwork.
At 2am he came back with a note for my doctor and told me to go home and "wait for a week or two to see if it's really broken, then come back when it's healed and we'll REBREAK IT TO SET IT STRAIGHT". 4 hours after arriving, they had literally just given me some pain killers and stuck a bit of tape on it. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Oh, and the best part is I have a major abdominal surgery next month so I'll get to deal with the various Loris all over again, only in much more excruciating detail.
This article was hysterical! Having had three c-sections, which means three 4 day hospital stays I have experienced every single one of these types. Not getting pain meds on time is probably the worst, but not worse then the nurse trying to keep your baby from you all night.
Replyyes, an appendectomy is an emergency and its good you atleast got treated. for the people bitching about having to wait long for their sniffles or their "really bad headache" to be treated, it's called an EMERGENCY room. familiar with the word "triage"? the doctor is taking long to see you because he has actual emergencies to attend to and unfortunately the law wont let hospitals turn your whining ass away. dont want to wait long? go to a clinic. dont have insurance? get it then. cant afford it? well tough shit. that system is under the control of politicians and insurance companies and the last time i checked the majorirty of obama's health care plan doesnt come into effect until 2013 or later, to make sure he gets re-elected. either way the doctors and hospitals are in hardly any position to do anything about it so direct your bitching somewhere else. i still have two years of med school left and ive already heard all the bitching and moaning i can take.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesOh, fantastic; two years of med school and you're already burnt out. Maybe you're in the wrong career...? I say this because the bitching and moaning will always happen, but there will also never stop being people who really need your help. And caring for those people will never stop being rewarding if you do it right.
Nice going, medstudent Lori. How about at least waiting until you're qualified before berating your patients?
The problem is that a LOT of people don't have access to clinics. I live in NYC, where there are tons of them (but, with that said, very few or none in the outer boroughs, or in lower-income neighborhoods like the one where I live), and those "minute clinic" places are becoming more common in rural areas, but not everyone knows about them yet.
Clinics are awesome--I work for a company that has one for employees and it is the best thing ever. But a lot of folks either don't know about or don't have access to anything between "emergency room" and "wait 3 weeks to see a GP." There's still a culture shift taking place when it comes to urgent but non-emergency care, and it's gonna take time and access for that to change. Like, right now, if I go to google or google maps and run searches for walk-in or non-emergency or urgent care in my area, nothing useful comes up. Unless I'm looking for a specific chain, by name, it just gives me hospital ERs. That's something that's going to evolve but it just hasn't happened yet.
@atrophia im not burnt out. i love what im doing. just last week i assisted in my first ever surgery and it was the most amazing experience in my life. im not berating my patients (not that they are mine per se but the ones my resident is seeing that i sit in on). even in the clinic its very interesting and rewarding. but its a daily thing for patients to harass me about how long theyve had to wait even after i tell them im just a student and i cant do anything to make their turn come faster. and ive still gotten more than a few attempted speeches about how "all you doctors are the same" and overpaid this and uncaring that. its those people that i just want to push out the door (and maybe down a flight of stairs) and tell them to b***h to someone else because there are plenty of people waiting patiently for their turn who are more deserving of the time im wasting listening to you. and when you have about 60 patients to see in a single day as is the case in the urban clinics ive worked, every minute is important.
@ruckumbine believe me i know im not saying the healtchcare system isnt completely FUBAR. far from it. thankfully ive never lived in that sort of situation but i can imagine how difficult it must be just getting a GP. i DO want health insurance to become universal or at least more accessible. both for the sake of the patients and for the sake of the doctor's workload (few things are more dangerous than an exhausted surgeon). it would be a virtuous cycle when doctors are less overworked and exhausted they will be able to devote more attention to individual patients and in turn patients will be more satisfied with the care they are receiving and be better able to trust their doctors. but the problem is a lot of people stand to lose money from that sort of thing, most notably the insurance companies. there is a lot of bureaucratic horseshit getting in the way of that change you speak of but long story short i agree and the sooner it happens the better :)
ps please be kind to your er reg. we are here to help you. yelling will get you nowhere. and drug seekers we can pick you out a mile away..
ReplyHi I am a Christine not a Lori. I work er registration. I first would like to apologize for the bad hospital experience. I would give all the credit to #1 people who suck at there jobs and don't belong in health care #2 patients treating the er like a clinic #3 poor health care plan in the usa. I for one love my job and i feel that every patient i come in contact with smile,yes smile in the er!!! I found by LISTENING AND MAKING EYE CONTACT IS THE KEY! Yes I know it is rare to find someone who really does care but they are out there. I live my life on purpose. I can relate to your story I just spent 12 hours listening to crying,vomiting,yelling screaming, and the same questions over and over and over. "how much longer?"" where am I in line?" they people that came in after me left before me? and ofcouse the pain is getting worst. let me save your breath. I am one of the most compasionate person I have ever know. In a Hospital EMERGENCY ROOM we care for patients their complaint by severity and health history each patient is given a by each critical level on which we follow and durning their visit it can change up or down, hopefully down. Remember you don't want to be sick or you can always be actually dying like the kid in room six tonight or the mom in room 2 who was dying on her birthday. Now when Lori seems distracted and does jump though a magic hoop it is because er reg multitasks at least 15 things at on given time and is wanted in 5 places at once. you don't know what we just saw. A childs head (the same age as my daughter) being ran ran by a truck tire while watching th mother and heer 3 small children cry and fall to there knees. it still gets to me...Or oven smashing a 3yr old, same age as my son and then I have to go and still ask for signatures and ask for insurance information. while trying not to fall on my knees with them. then right after go ep front and register. To hear i've been waiting 3 hours for a bed and I'm in alot of pain. and I think to myself if you only knew......We may be short at times and may appear rude (well not me) but we are human and yes I see things like this every day but. These things we see does put a shell on us and makes us alittle stronger.it doesn't mean that we are not tearing up inside. the reason we have you sit in th waiting is because #1 no bed #2 fast track can be seen by a PA #no beds. The best place for you is in the waiting room so if anything should happen even worse we can seek immediate action. i have been on both sides of thr glass and your right the er sucks. you dont feel well Lori's behind the glass laughing and your in pain. Lori job is very serious and every now and then you gotta laugh. somethings people come in the er for are funny I'm sorry,but sad at the same time. I swear i should write all the stories in a book from the OMG's to the What's that come in. my favorite part of the life cycle in the er is when a patient xpires and then you hear overhead 5minutes later a baby song cuz a baby was just born. things we cannot answer "how much longer?" the wait time depends on pt flow the more pt the longer the more critcal pts over you the longer. if you are ever given a wait time they are lying to you....period. like today it was nice in the begining then at 7pm it felt as if two bus pulled up and dropped off 32 pts with only two er reg working the front. i got my first break 6 hous into my shift. I am sick myself with a sinus infection. so please think twice before you get upset. ANd sometimes get upset. if you feel yor not getting the quality care you think speak up. yo knoe your body better than any of us. SPEAK UP. We do hear you. Just please be patient. Sorry if this is back and forth I'm tired i have to work tomorrow, i mean today in 7 hours........with love christine you friendly helping hands in er registration! I'm glad to hear your wife is better. So sorry for your bad experience. IMy daughter appendix almost burst after being sent home 3 times from the er telling me she (5years old at the time) that she has cramps. another 10 min they would have exploded and probably killed her. I still work with that same dr....We are all human. but if something wld hv gone wrong. MONSTER MOM wld hv come out. I am a mom First. i do feel your pain.
ReplyTalk about pain: after my second c-section, I had gas bubbles to get trapped.. in my shoulder! Misery.
ReplyThat happened to me as well with my second c-section. The pain from that was almost worse than the surgery.
I'm a combat medic in the army...pain is the patient's problem. That's not to say we won't manage it if it's possible and convenient but it certainly isn't a priority. Give the hospital staff a break.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesAlright next time you see a kid screaming his head off from a nasty lion bite to the face, just ignore him. He doesn't need help. :P
Maybe in the army pain is the patient's problem, but most people aren't trained to put up with excruciating pain and prefer to not be in pain. I'll keep what you said in mind, though: next time I go to the hospital, I'll bring some heroin or something to help manage the pain. I mean, it's my problem, I can fix it however I want, right?
The next time you go through any pain, fix it yourself. Don't ask anyone else to help you. If you shatter a bone, preform the surgery on yourself. It can be done, it's been said before in cracked articles. Also, if anything else is "your problem", then don't get anyone else to help you. Being robbed? Don't call the police, it's your own problem.
But honestly, the pain is our problem. And we're relying on you to fix it. Probably paying you, too. A leaky pipe is our problem, but the plumber is still the one who fixes it. It's not because we can't do anything ourselves, it's because we can't learn how to fix everything. If I break my leg, I don't want to go through 10 years of medical training to learn how to fix it, I want to get someone who knows how to fix it to do so, and fast.
exactly. thank you very much.
I had to scream at the top of my lungs before they ushered me into the back, where non-sick people couldn't hear me, after an hour in the waiting room, with a note from my doctor, telling them I needed immediate treatment for gallstones, and that I was in a lot of pain. Even then, it was another hour before I got drugs. Then, it was about 36 hours before I finally got surgery. The infection would have killed me, had they waited any longer.
Replyyou had a referal from your doctor not an admit to the hospital. Your alive today because of those you critize. if anything be mad at your primary care provider. He could have saved alot of your screams. just saying.....it is what it is though i am so sorry you went though that....hope your feeling better!
Oh my God, another person who went through the hell I did! Except, only one doctor believed I had gallstones. i was crying in agony all day every day, that wasn't enough for my specialist to refer me to get the operation. I showed her the x rays- diagnosis was that it was all in my head. I was in agony for months and months before I even got believed by a doctor and it was my gynecological who set the ball rolling. My poor mum had to go through worse, when she had it she in ER every week nearly and they kept sending her home. She was vomiting up what looked like coffee grounds, in terrible pain all the time and nobody would even examine her before they sent her home. I'm not in the US, I'm in Australia.
I was in the hospital for ball cancer, but we managed to spot it early and had it removed, and it was all fine...
Replythere's a lesson in that for everybody: CHECK YOUR BALLS!
I once was flown into a hospital because I was stabbed and the s****y small town hospital couldn't treat me. At this point I was on a lot of drugs. I was asked "Are you in pain", but I truthfully said I wasn't. The nurse said, "well that looks like it hurts" and shot me full of morphine. Best Lori ever.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesI'm sure you were very happy, I know I would've been to get a free dose of morphine, but to be honest that seems kind of irresponsible on the nurse's part. Usually the doctor tells the nurse what medicine a patient needs and it's the nurse's job to administer it. What if with all those drugs you were on, that extra shot caused you some kind of bad reaction? Her sympathy was appropriate, but at the same time there's a reason they don't call them "doctor".
@Krextor. You know, nurses actually learn pharmacology. Contraindications, interactions, what those little white pills do. Just because they're not MDs doesn't mean they're incompetent.
@Krextor I work at hospital, and you would be surprised at just how much of the damn thing is run by nurses. You should maybe do a ittle research before you start talking aobut S*** you don't understand.
Quite a bit of Krextor hate. Without proper toxicology test (which likely wouldn't have been run on a stabbing victim. "Ah, hello, sir what seems to be the HOLY s**t YOUR INTESTINES ARE IN ME EYE"). So,dependsing on what you were on, that could have ended as an overdose (if it was an opiate like heroin, or codeine) or the sudden respiratory depression and shock after the effects of the original drug wore off (if it was a stimulant). Whether it was a doctor or a nurse doesn't really make a difference (I will say that I, personally would rather be treated by an experienced MD than an experienced nurse) it was kind of irresponsible.
Furthermore, when he went in for surgery he could have gone under and never come back. Anestethiologists aren't omnipotent.
@MisterLiver. True, but they nurses and doctors already know before they ever see a patient that is being transferred how much of whatever drugs have already been administered and how much more the patient's system can take based off of their height/weight ratio.
Krextor, I think some clarification is needed here. Usually the physician prescribes pain medications on an as needed basis, with set doses and intervals (i.e. "morphine 2 mg IV every hour as needed for pain") and then the nurses administer within these prescribed parameters. They do it like that to avoid some of the "Lori" situations described in this article - if a nurse had to get an order from a dr. every single time somebody was in pain, do you know how inefficient that would be, and how much longer the poor patient would be in pain each and every time? Now, as to the nurse administering the medication when there was no pain, then she was not following the order ("as needed for pain"). But let's be honest, "shot me full of morphine" isn't very specific, that makes it sound like she gave some large dose, but we don't know if that's the case. Could have been a small dose just to prevent him from being in a total pain crisis when the numbness wore off. There's really no way for us to judge the appropriateness of her action with the information given. Not that I must defend all nurses everywhere, but you just jumped to a whole lot of conclusions there.
I went to the hospital once because of a really bad sunburn which I had over my back, shoulders, and chest. Of course, when I got to the emergency room and told them they apparently interpreted it as, "OH MY GOD, HE SAID HE HAS CHEST PAINS. GET THIS 19 YEAR OLD TO THE CARDIAC UNIT AND GIVE HIM A METRIC FUCKTON OF TESTS FOR HIS HEART." Wound up being about $10,000 for them to tell me that I have a perfectly healthy heart. In other news, I've since decided to boycott hospitals for the time being.
Replywhy would you go to the hospital for a sunburn really? Speak up. How far in did you realize you didn't have chest pain. the first thing you said probably was my chest hurt (meaning from the sunburn) you are in an emergency room. Was your sunburn an emergency? next sunburn visit your local walgreens it will save you about 9995.00 it is what it is....sorry you had a bad experience.
sunburn at the er really? next time go to walmart and save 9995.00 you should be glad they took you in so fast. better not having heart problems and waiting to be seen while dying. i wonder if you made a real emergency delay? seconds count.
Ha...staying in the hospital an extra night while not having insurance is actually more like buying a brand new BMW. My husband broke his leg a few years ago and had to stay two nights, plus have surgery because the break was a spiral fracture. AND we had to call an ambulance because it happened in the second floor bathroom of our home and there was NO WAY I was going to be able to get him down the stairs and into the car myself, considering I am 5'2" and he's 6'6". All said and done when the final bill arrived it was $85,000. We found a mistake which could have saved us about half that, and when we told them about it, they added MORE cost onto the bill and NEVER corrected the mistake we found. AT LEAST his hospital stay was not like your girlfriend's. Pretty much everyone was very friendly and helpful, and they gave him as much pain medication as they could, including AS SOON AS they got to his side on the floor of our house. Shoot this guy up with morphine, I mean seriously, LOOK AT HIS LEG.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIf there was really a mistake, you should contest it. Over 40000 dollars is nothing to just "wave off" in this economy. Heck if your insurance helped pay for it and you told them about the mistake, they'd probably have a team of lawyers go after the hospital because they don't want to have to pay for a mistake either.
hesuchia should've called bullshit. $40000 is exactly the amount of money that never gets overbilled without lawyers being hired.
I had a spiral fracture of my tibia (shin bone) and the only thing they gave me for AGES was paracetamol.
They did give me gas and air - which was BRILLIANT - later, but only while I was getting plastered.
But at least I didn't have to pay, since my country has free healthcare.
Bubbles.Pain.Genius.
Replyokay, so this article seems to be mostly about people sucking at their jobs, but a lot of the comments i'm seeing seem to be variations of, "i was in the hospital and it took a really long time". i'm a volunteer at a large urban emergency room. my job is basically to make your hospital experience as non-shitty as possible (which is not very, but i do my best). i also get yelled at a lot: when the hell is the doctor coming, i've been here for six hours, i'm in pain.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesthing is, usually if the doctor isn't coming, there's a good reason. like, they're busy helping some guy who had a stroke continue to breathe, or they're dealing with the motorcycle crash victim who was just brought in missing most of his face.
you don't often see these patients, because there are generally specialized rooms for the most sick, to give them breathing support and whatnot. but it's something to think about when you're getting mad about waiting times. at least you still have most of your face and can breathe independently.
would you like a warm blanket?
Totally agree.. pain is not always an indication of severity... in fact it rarely is
... *deletes comment she was writing*
Seriously, that's made me shut the hell up and think. Damn. Well played.
I would love a warm blanket, thank you. Can you give us some painkillers to go with that? I honestly wouldn't mind waiting if I wasn't in absolute pain.
If only there was a way to just get waiting patients on painkillers while they wait, instead of torturing them with the slowest clock in the world.
ME: 'Lori #2, it's been almost two hours since I asked you to bring my baby back from the nursery, where is she?'
ReplyLORI:'There were six OTHER babies born last night who need care, we'll get her to you when we can.'
Then she licked the tears from my face, flapped her massive bat wings and exited my room, cackling.
I wish I was making that up.
You are amazing for not murdering her