Happy Days in Random Chatter 10

[bobtheenchantedone]

I just discovered that there are few things more relieving than realizing you don't actually have to keep arguing with misguided people on Facebook.

[Portia]

I only made it through about half an hour of Relief Society before breaking down. Sigh.

[UffishThought]

Eh, some days I can't make it through Relief Society, either. Don't feel too bad.

[Whistler]

If you ever go the ER, don't tell the med student completely different things than what you tell the doctor. It just makes us look like complete morons and it doesn't actually help you.

okay, so this is what I don't understand, not with med students but nurses/doctors. Why do I have to say what's wrong with me like five times? If I'm sick, of course I'm not going to say the same thing twice, it's not like I've rehearsed it. I hate it when the doctor comes in and asks all the same questions as the nurse. It just makes me want to ask "can you read??"

But maybe there's a magical thing to asking people twice?

[NerdGirl]

If you ever go the ER, don't tell the med student completely different things than what you tell the doctor. It just makes us look like complete morons and it doesn't actually help you.

okay, so this is what I don't understand, not with med students but nurses/doctors. Why do I have to say what's wrong with me like five times? If I'm sick, of course I'm not going to say the same thing twice, it's not like I've rehearsed it. I hate it when the doctor comes in and asks all the same questions as the nurse. It just makes me want to ask "can you read??"

But maybe there's a magical thing to asking people twice?

Honestly, yes, there is something magical about having people tell their story. Not always about telling something more than once, although people frequently do remember details that they didn't remember the first time. But you cannot understand a patient's symptoms and what is going on with them completely just by reading the chart, no matter how detailed the chart is. It used to frustrate me, too, before I was in med school (I've been a patient a LOT). But medicine is about someone's life and their narrative and their experience, not just a list of symptoms, and you need to hear them tell the story if you are going to be responsible for their care. There is a lot you can tell by how someone tells the story, and when you hear it all in context, it's much easier to ask clarifying questions and to go into more detail about certain things. And the triage nurse, the regular nurse, and the doctor all have different roles in patient care and need information for different reasons, so they are going to ask things in different ways and focus on different parts of the story.

There are some practical reasons for it as well. You need to make sure that you have the story correct (not because nurses get things wrong, but sometimes they are tired or busy or you read their notes wrong or they don't ask the exact same questions you need to ask because they need different information than what you need - it happens). And in the ERs that I've worked in, sometimes when you go to see the patient, the nursing notes aren't actually in the chart yet because the nurse is still writing them or the nurse is doing something with them and all you have is the little one-sentence thing in the computer from the triage nurse, and you don't want to make the patient wait longer so you just go in and see them without having read the nursing notes. And there are some questions that you have to ask repeatedly even if the patient has answered them a million times because it's going to be a disaster if you get certain details wrong - ie, "I'm going to write you a prescription for X. I know you've been asked this about 10 times, but do you have any drug allergies? I just want to be absolutely sure so I don't give you something you're allergic to."

So yeah, there are a variety of reasons for it, but actually hearing the story from the patient in their own words whenever possible is incredibly important.

(And my initial comment was referring to huge discrepancies in what some patients tell different people - like they'll tell me that they are on some medication for something, then tell the doctor that they aren't taking any medication for anything, or vice versa. And it's kind of important to know what meds someone is on before you give them more meds - we can look up pharmacy records, but those only have prescription meds on them. And I don't even mean elderly patients who are on so many things they don't remember them all - people my age are the ones that tend to do this.)

[Whistler]

well, thanks for explaining that, I've always wondered

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Thank you for your comma splice, I appreciate it.

XD

[Digit]

Thank you for your comma splice, I appreciate it.

That feels semicolonish to me

[Giovanni Schwartz]

A comma splice is where you put a comma where a semicolon belongs.

To use more worldly terms, it's like the words in your sentence saved the spot in bed reserved for semi-colon and gave it to comma.

[Portia]

Gio, you gave a textbook example of a comma splice.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

In my response to Whistler? That was the whole point.

[Portia]

Who made you the syntax police?

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Oops... I dropped my hashtag.

I was #trolling.

[Whistler]

*eyeroll

[Giovanni Schwartz]

;D Love ya, Whistler. You know, my first Question ever was specifically addressed to you.

[Digit]

Meandering through my local library, I picked two new things to learn: Javascript and Swedish (already thought of Weird Al). We'll see how long either sticks.

[Whistler]

great now I feel guilty for my punctuation transgressions AND being apathetic about it

[Portia]

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/110 ... e-dare-you

Awesome. And relevant to our talk here of secessionists. I love TNR.

[Whistler]

I'm not sure why everyone is afraid of Texas secceding. I'm ignorant: why is it such a big deal? If that's what most of the people in Texas want why not let them go?

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Because then we'd have to redesign the flag! Duh! We can't let that happen!

Although I saw a funny... blog post? where they were like "2164 residents of South Dakota have signed the petition. They just need a few more head of cattle, then they'll have 100% of the people there."