Advice for new interns
With medical school graduations occurring and July 1 rapidly approaching (the date new interns start in the vast majority of residency programs, although some programs start a week earlier), the Mad House Madman has some advice for newly minted doctors. My favorite:
Of course, others can't resist getting in on the action, including, Nurse Kelly, who kindly offers a course in Now not to piss of the nurses, with the following purpose:
Sounds like a worthy endeavor.
10. Some operational alerts:
a. When a patient says he only drinks alcohol socially, your follow up question should be “How social are you?” You’ll be surprised.
b. When you ask if a patient smokes and he says yes your follow up question is not “How much?” but rather “What?”
Of course, others can't resist getting in on the action, including, Nurse Kelly, who kindly offers a course in Now not to piss of the nurses, with the following purpose:
To keep burned out nurses who don't get breaks despite paying union dues from getting more pissed off and/or annoyed than they already are by keeping useless, dangerous, and/or pointless doctor's orders to a minimum. Oh, and to facilitate good doctor-nurse relations or something like that.
Sounds like a worthy endeavor.
Now all I'm waiting for is a affably-titled post called, "How to not piss doctors off if you're a nurse." On my, literally, first day of nurse's training at my hospital, a general surgeon (who happens to be kind of an unaffable guy) is told me the #1 way to piss HIM off was to say, "Hi, I'm the nurse for so-and-so...are you familiar with this patient?"
ReplyDeleteHe says just to tell him succinctly what's wrong and not bother him with "are you familiar with..." He acted like it was a sin against the medical profession...