Monday, July 28, 2008

Chief complaint:

Watery diarrhea x10 years.

No Crohn's, no colitis, no diverticulitis.

What the hell do you want me to do for you besides give you fluids which you already received earlier today by a home care nurse?

Also: This person has a family physician AND a General Surgeon who she has been seeing for this problem.

WTF?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

maybe she wanted some compassion? someone to listen to her? someone to... be a nurse?? your job is not just to give her fluids and clean her butt... maybe being a nurse means more than that?

Anonymous said...

To "anonymous":

The ER/ED is not the place to go for this type of a chronic problem that's been ongoing for 10 years. I'm sure her primary physician and surgeon have done extensive workups. Any diagnostic test that can be done in the ER has more than likely already been done. If this person needs someone to listen to her, there are mental health professionals. How do you see this as an EMERGENCY?? These types of patients compromise the care of the true EMERGENCY patients. Also, have you considered what it costs for a visit such as this? If this visit were coming out of your pocket (and in some way it is) would you still think this person should have gone to the ER for this problem?

miss-elaine-ious said...

For the record, I was more than compassionate. Except in rare circumstances, I am always professional and helpful and have empathy in some way for my patients. However as Irish stated, there was no reason for her to go to the emergency department for this problem. Medically, she was stable, and there really wasn't anything we would do for her that the other docs haven't already done. It was a waste of her time as well as ours.