Doctor Stories

[Chimaera182]

Quite amusing. The Kentucky Jelly one was best, IMO; it's a good thing I'm starting to master the art of not laughing aloud. I cackle when I laugh, and it's rather loud, and I'm at my parents' right now and my mom's asleep, and I don't need to be waking her up.

[Obsidian]

An email I recieved from an EMT pal in Edmonton.

Subject: Proper Narrative Descriptions

It has come to our attention from several emergency rooms that many EMS (Emergency Medical Services) narratives have taken a decidedly creative direction lately. Effective immediately, all members are to refrain from using slang and abbreviations to describe patients, such as the following:

1) Cardiac patients should not be referred to with MUH (messed up heart), PBS (pretty bad shape), PCL (pre-code looking) or HIBGIA (had it before, got it again).

2) Stroke patients are NOT "Charlie Carrots." Nor are rescuers to use CCFCCP (Coo Coo for Cocoa Puffs) to describe their mental state.

3) Trauma patients are not CATS (cut all to sh*t), FDGB (fall down, go boom), TBC (total body crunch) or "hamburger helper." Similarly, descriptions of a car crash do not have to include phrases like "negative vehicle to vehicle interface" or "terminal deceleration syndrome."

4) HAZMAT teams are highly trained professionals, not "glow worms."

5) Persons with altered mental states as a result of drug use are not considered "pharmaceutically gifted."

6) Gunshot wounds to the head are not "trans-occipital implants."

7) The homeless are not "urban outdoorsmen", nor is endotracheal intubation referred to as a "PVC Challenge."

8) And finally, do not refer to recently deceased persons as being "paws up," ART (assuming room temperature), CC (Cancel Christmas), CTD (circling the drain), or NLPR (no long playing records).

I know you will all join me in respecting the cultural diversity of our patients to include their medical orientations in creating proper narratives and log entries.

[dragon wench]

@Obsidian,
ROFL!

This is my favourite

5) Persons with altered mental states as a result of drug use are not considered "pharmaceutically gifted."

[Magrus]

I liked that one myself DW, those are great Obsidian.

Umm, yeah. I wish I had been in the hospital when my friend and I took our former friend to the hospital. He had that problem, and I slept in the car while my one friend watched him, then we switched. He mumbled something about the doctors making fun of our buddy.

I went in to check on the kid and he was grinning at me and demanding I ask the doctors for more of the stuff they'd hooked him up to on the IV, some sort of new opiate derivative for people in a lot of pain. I went to find the doctor or nurses, found some nurses, repeated the request and one laughed, a lady said "If you'd have seen what we found in his system, you'd know why we're regretting giving him that stuff in the first place. Give him blanket instead." I did know what was in his system, I figured they'd have checked before giving him pain killers that strong.

[Obsidian]

Glad you enjoyed them, I'm fairly sure they are made up, but, they could just be legit...


My favourite is "ART - Assuming room temperature"

I keep trying to write up some of my funny doctor stories from the army, but they usually fall flat as a write them.

My one good one is a nurse I was working for was a big DnD fan, and was seeing a patient of mine for a redose of his ridaline. I coached the kid to go in and say "The ridaline gives me +4 to concentration checks" when asked about it.

[Magrus]

Heh, I wonder if he did.

[Obsidian]

From the explosion of laughter that came from his office, I reckon he did.

[Moonbiter]

Back in the early 80s I wound up in a hospital outside Krefeld, Germany with a really nasty stomach infection after a beer festival. Now, this was sort of the Country Bumpkin Emergency Central. To give you an indication, we were three guys in the room. One was an elderly biker character with a spinal injury who sat by the window smoking roll-ups 24-7. The other was a 12 year old farm boy from some extremely religious sect of some sort, whose parents came to visit two times a day and didn't want him to talk to any of us while he was there. This was a kid who worked on the farm, and went to school 2 times(!) a week because that was the minimum German law allowed you to get away with back then. When I finally got him to talk to me, he asked (and I kid you not) if we Norwegians still used sailships to travel abroad, and if we had radios and tv. It was completely surreal.
Anyway, It was a Sunday, and I had been there for about four days feeling like death warmed up, when the door opened, and in lumbers this monster of a nurse/orderly/whathaveye, carrying a tray with a syringe on it. He told me, pleasantly enough, that it was time for my daily shot. I went "Wait a minute! I've been here for four days, and I haven't had any shots! What's this?"
So the big lummox (imagine a slightly backwards son of Arnold and The Rock in white pyjamas) looks at the sticker glued to the syringe and goes "well, this says Room 7, bed 2, so let's do it."
I go "No way! This isn't happening! I wanna talk to the doctor!"
So now the Hulk is getting a wee bit testy, and tells me it's Sunday, and the only resident doctor on call is busy, so would I please just put my arm out and be a good boy? I've had a quite healthy phobia for needles, especially syringes, for my entire life, so I tell him to sod off. That's when the guy gets downright unpleasant, telling me I'm taking the shot, and he will call an orderly to help him if that's what it takes. I tell him to go fetch his whole family if he feels like it, I'm not taking the shot. I'm actually curling up in bed, prepared to defend my skinny veins to the death, when luckily the chain-smoking biker-dude by the window gets into the argument, and tells Mister Healthcare to stop being a pain and go get a doctor. So the ox makes THE executive decision of a lifetime. He lumbers out, and is gone for about 20 minutes, coming back with a doctor in tow.

The doc takes one look at the syringe lying there on the tray and goes:

"This goes to room 1, bed 2. When are you morons going to learn to read and write?"

[dragon wench]

@Moonbiter,
ROFLMAO!!!

That sounds like it could be a scene from a Fellini movie or something similar

[Moonbiter]

@Wench: When I moved permanently to Lousianna in early -91, I had people asking me if a) Norway was up in Missoouri, or b) if Norway wasn't a sort of car tyre.... The health facilities in Krefeld was like a luxurious dream, though... I still wonder what was in that shot....