I just finished a week of night float at what is probably considered one of the “outside hospitals”.  The nursing pages are painful. I’d typically receive a page every evening notifying me that a patient had not moved his bowels in 3-10 days, and that the constipation protocol was just initiated. Other times, nursing would demand that I order Seroquel to knock out patients who were simply irritating. While I don’t mind constructive advice on patient management, I don’t appreciate illogical verbal pressure from unqualified people to medically subdue a non-hostile, non-psychotic patient who asks for ice chips.  These select ancillary staff workers leave a foul air that mars the reputation of nurses and techs, and I have to remind myself that not all nurses are lazy assholes. On weekends where I’m in the hospital for 30-36hrs, my pager goes berserk every 10 hrs with 10-15 pages within 2 minutes for inconsequential order clarifications–this corresponds to the nursing shift changes. They tend to forget that my shift spans four of theirs.

On Tuesday, my co-resident and I caught a rotund technician lurking around the resident’s lounge. He stated that he left a “paper” somewhere in the lounge and promptly dashed off. Later, we noticed that half of my co-resident’s iced tea was missing, and his sandwich was gone. We should have confronted the tech in the lounge, since all other staff is forbidden from hanging out in our lounge.

While hospital staff that outright harm patient care are terminated, the majority of the subpar group continue to maintain their duties without penalty even though the hospital administration is aware of them. It is unfortunate, but there is a shortage of qualified nurses in American hospitals. I believe that the shortage is expected to worsen in the next decade; it does not look good for inpatient medicine from this aspect. Hopefully, I will be out of the inpatient business by then…

medicine medicine, rant