Nurses: The Most Valuable Medical Team Members

Nurses provide the foundation for excellent medical care. Nurses spend 8-12 hour shifts with their hospitalized patients. Doctors see their patients for 15 minutes or so each day. Good doctors respect nurses and listen to their advise.

Sadly nurses are overworked and unappreciated by administrators. In addition to providing patient medical care, they also must spend hours each shift completing electronic medical reports, most of which provide little information or may duplicate reports made by other staff members. They are responsible for keeping patients clean and cleaning their messes. They keep the patients' rooms tidy. They have learned how to maintain a pleasant attitude around difficult, passive-aggressive, and needy patients.
   
Several friends have questioned the validity of the August 27th blog entry accounting my recent Carilion emergency room experience. "Bizarre, exaggerated, fabricated," they said. Weird maybe, but every word was true.

Neither did I concoct nor exaggerate the following interaction:

While I was lying on the stretcher waiting for someone to do something a woman was wheeled to the space next to my gurney.

Nurse (kindly): Will you please move over from the ambulance stretcher onto our gurney.

Patient: I can't. I'm too heavy.

She was right about that. She must have weighed at the very least 350, maybe 400 pounds. It took four aids to place a sheet under her and  move her over to the gurney.

Nurse: What's been going on?

Patient: I had a lithotripsy (procedure for kidney stones) three days ago. When I woke up this morning I felt sick, nauseated. My stomach hurt. I took my temperature. It was 102. I told myself to call an ambulance.

Nurse: We will look into it. Have you been here before?

Patient: Oh yes. I have been here many times. Blood sugar problems, high blood pressure, gall bladder, back pain, headaches, nerves. I'm surprised you don't know me. I know just about every nurse and doctor here (giggling, cheerful, a I-sure-am-happy-to-be-here-among-my-friends-attitude).

Nurse: Did you call your doctor about your temperature?

Patient: No. It takes a long time to get him on the phone. You call and the voice tells you to punch one, then you have to punch more numbers, then you are on hold, then the receptionist comes on and tells you the doctor is not in the office. It's easier to call an ambulance.

Nurse: Where was your procedure done?

Patient: Lewis-Gale (a competitor of Carilion)

Nurse: We don't have the capability to get your electronic medical record from Lewis-Gale. Why didn't you take the ambulance to Lewis-Gale?

Patient: I don't know. I guess I like it better here.

Enter doctor who takes a history, examines the patient: Your temperature was normal when we took your vital sounds but you may have a urinary tract infection. Would you give us a urine specimen?

An hour or so later the nurse enters: Have you been able to pee in the bed pan yet?

Patient: No. I strained and strained. I just can't get any. Maybe I have an obstruction.

Nurse: We'll have to catheterize you then.

Curtain closes. I hear the nurse struggling to get beyond the fat so that the patient can be catheterized. Suddenly I hear the nurse scream and jump back.

Patient: I'm sorry (nervous giggling). I didn't think I could pee then it all came gushing out. I must have really been full.

Thank you nurses for your invaluable service and for all the things you have to put up with.