Chicken Little, RN

The inpatient psychiatric unit is a lot of fun. I enjoy the field, the doctors are often hilarious, and it is great fun to have conversations with the patients. The nurses...well, the nurses are another story.

Don't get me wrong - for the most part they are quite good. But some of them are so far removed from the world of "medicine" that they tend to lose touch with reality. It's hard to tell where the patients end and the nurses begin. Take this conversation, for instance:

Chicken Little, RN: Have you seen this guys blood pressure??? (points to vital signs which show a BP of 134/89)
Montgomery: Oh yeah, we saw that yesterday. We started him on hydrochlorothiazide.
Chicken Little, RN: If you don't start him on some blood pressure medicine he's going to stroke out while I'm taking care of him!
Montgomery: Um, right. We started him on hydrochlorothiazide yesterday.
Chicken Little, RN: That's not a blood pressure medication, that's a diuretic.
Montgomery: I gotta go... (little smoke cloud where I used to be standing)

That's almost word-for-word our conversation. Have you ever dealt with somebody so wrong on so many levels you don't even know where to start? For you non-medical folks, here's an equivalent conversation:

Chicken Little, RN: Have you seen this guys blood glucose??? (points to glucose slightly above normal)
Montgomery: Oh yeah, he's a type I diabetic. We re-started his insulin when he got here.
Chicken Little, RN: If you don't give him something that lowers his blood glucose he's going to explode into a cloud of sugar!
Montgomery: Um, right. We re-started his insulin when he got here.
Chicken Little, RN: That doesn't lower blood glucose, it's a synthetic hormone.
Montgomery: I gotta go... (tire tread marks on the ground where I used to be standing)

Or if you're even farther removed from medicine:

Some dude: (pointing at my car's near empty fuel gauge) Have you seen your fuel level???
Montgomery: (as I stand next to the gas actively pumping into my car) I'm putting gas in it as we speak.
Some dude: If you don't put fuel in that thing it's going to implode and form a black hole, killing everyone on Earth.
Montgomery: Um, right. I'm putting gas in it as we speak.
Some dude: That's not fuel, it's a petroleum-derived liquid consisting of hydrocarbons.
Montgomery: I gotta go... (escaping through a quickly dug tunnel at my feet)

Being a student is rough enough, what with the >40 hour work weeks for negative pay. But when you are right about something and people refuse to listen because you're "just a student," it becomes incredibly frustrating. On the plus side, the nurse had the same nasty-toned conversation with a resident who set her straight. Also, I sold her car to a chop-shop, ruined her credit rating, and filled her house with angry badgers. Revenge is a dish best served with angry badgers.

Life Update
10 for 10 on my residency applications. Ka-chow!