“We Don’t Care What’s On Your Head. We Care What’s In It.”
So there’s this thing in Quebec which I’m sure my Canadian readers have heard of and maybe also a few of my American readers, which involves the Quebec government devising…
Battered Nurse Syndrome
The phrases junior nurses and most staff do not care to hear from senior nurses…
…or the negativity they can spew…. “You wouldn’t know what to look for in that type of patient assessment anyways…” How do you know I don’t know what to assess…
Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate the Nurse
An unpleasant, no, ugly and unfortunate situation at Victoria General Hospital is preventing a woman from seeing her son. From the National Post article: A 73-year-old woman who travelled to…
A Nurse Contemplates Leaving the Profession
Dinner last night with an old friend who toils in the mines of Labour and Delivery. She has worked there for four years. She told me of an incident not…
Fat Nurses Need Not Apply Revisited
More on the Texas hospital, Citizens Medical Center, which banned fat people from being hired. Citizens Medical Center, you might remember, made it policy to exclude new hires with a…
Fat Nurses Need Not Apply
A Texas hospital has declared war on the scourge of obese nurses: A Victoria hospital already embroiled in a discrimination lawsuit filed by doctors of Indian descent has instituted a…
Arizona is Where Educating Patients is Bad, Bad, Bad: An Amanda Trujillo Update
Just a few words about Amanda Trujillo. Jennifer Olin at RNCentral.com has detailed at the latest twists and turns of her case. I won’t repeat everything, but I want to…
Just Lie Back and Think of Florence — Or Not
Nurse K, possibly the doyenne of nurse bloggers, gives her two cents on Amanda Trujillo. Her advice is to surrender: Yes, I’m going to say it: Forget advocating. Be humble.…
Doctors Are From Mars, Nurses Are From — Oh, To Hell With It
News flash! From Fierce Medical News, here’s the shocking headline: Docs, nurses miscommunicate on respect, job role When you guys pick yourselves off the floor from laughing, here’s the money…
Nurses are Like Howler Monkeys, Poo and All
When I was a young, inexperienced nurse, I quickly learned one lesson: the cliché that Emergency nurses are fabulously assertive, mouthy, in-your-face pitbulls is absolutely true. I don’t mean ED…
Why Nurses are Furious about the Amanda Trujillo Case
The case of Amanda Trujillo has generated a great deal of passionate commentary across the nursing blogosphere. Trujillo, as you may well know, is the nurse who was fired by…
A Little Nurse Bashing to Start Your Day
For breakfast, how about some outrageous libel from physician-blogger Terry Simpson (Twitter: @DocSimpson). File this under how not to blog about a serious issue in health care: The Arizona State…
What the Amanda Trujillo Case Tells Me About Nurses Behaving Badly
Amanda Trujillo can take cold comfort that her situation is not unique. In the two years and odd months I have posted on this blog, I have written about six…
The Persecution of Amanda Trujillo
In the ugly, grey world of hospital balance sheets it’s almost a commonplace that physicians generate revenue while nurses represent a cost. Fancy procedures and sub-sub-specialties bring generous income streams,…
Karma Sweet Karma
The latest instalment of Nurses Behaving Badly featured the night charge and the day charge (i.e. me) getting a status asthmaticus organized in Resus 1 a few minutes after shift…
Under Construction
Meaning me, of course. I worked a (rare) Night 12 a few days ago. It was the usual dog’s breakfast of high acuity, walking wounded without end lining up at…
Sometimes Things Ain’t What They Seem
Niagara Health is taking a beat down lately. First it was an uncontrolled C. difficile outbreak, then a provincial administrator was appointed to deal with the outbreak, and now this:…
Andrea Horwath has a Complaint about the Health Care System.
For my American friends and readers, we’re having a provincial election here in Ontario. Since health care is deemed a provincial responsibility (though funded extensively by the federal government), it’s…
O Why O Why Did I Pick Up The Phone?
Phone rings. I look around. There is no ward clerk in sight. Damn. I answer. “Emergency, Charge Nurse.” “Can I ask you a question?” The voice on the other end…
In Which TorontoEmerg Discourses on Some Aspects of Human Nature
It’s probably more than little trite to say the Emergency Department is a microcosm or laboratory of humanity, but like most clichés it has an element of truth. We see…