Saturday, May 10, 2008

Whoa It's been awhile, people are still nuts.


OK so I have to apologize for not posting for like 2 months now, I became a little busy with life and this was put on the back burner. My hospital started blocking personal (BLOGS) sites from viewing on the internet so I wasn't able to log onto Blogger here and post anything because I usually did it from work. Home has been a bit busy and there just wasn't enough hours in the day to do much posting.

So here I am posting again, my hospital set up a WIFI network for patient and others to use so I bring my laptop into work now and can have some time to post again. So stick with my I'm able to do this again.


Now on to more pressing matters, OK so it's only what I think is a funny little story about a patient at work who really either had no clue, or she just wanted to be difficult and not have to the my therapy.

We RT's here at my little hospital have to start and do Incentive Spirometers with every surgical patient for 4 times to make sure they are doing it correctly and acheiving 50% of there predicted volume, which I personally think should be 50% of their PRE-surgical volume they were able to acheive and not the predicted. Some people have trouble getting 50% of predicted without the surgery. So anyways if the patient cannot get 50% of predicted we start EZPAP until they can acheive this goal. OK now off to my story.

I walk into Mrs. White's room to do round 2 of her I.S. and it goes like this:

"Hello Mrs. White I'm with Respiratory Therapy and I'm here to work with your I.S."
"OK, hand it here and I will do it."

I hand her the I.S. and she of course blows as hard as she can into the mouthpiece and of course nothing moves.

"Umm your doing this wrong, you need to suck in on the mouthpiece to make it move"
"Oh OK I remember."

Now mind you she has been previously instructed on this, I'm there for round 2. She goes ahead and blows on it.

"No remember suck in on it like you would when drinking from a straw."
"I can't, I hate using straws, I don't use them."
"Ok well have you ever used them, while drinking some pop or soda?"
"Nope I have always hated them and have NEVER used one."
"Well how do you know you hate them then."
"I just know I do."
"Well lets try breathing on this again, OK"

So off she goes blowing in and out on the I.S. and it's doing nothing.

"Mrs. White, try to take a deep breath through the tube like you would if you were going to go swimming under the water."
"I don't know how to swim, I don't swim."
"Umm, you have never gone swimming or wading in a pool?"
"No, I'm from the Southwest there are no pools there."
"I used to live in the Southwest for a couple years there were pools there, it's hot and people have to cool off."
"Well not in my time there were no pools in the Southwest."
"OK, I see, lets try sucking in on this tube again."

So now she is like panting on the tube, quick short breaths.

"Now take the tube out of your mouth and put your hand in front of your mouth and blow out."

She does

"Did you feel the air on your hand?"
"Yes."
"OK do the opposite of that, ya got it"
"OK I see."

Back with the I.S. she if breathing deeper in and out of it.

"Did you see it move up there?"
"Yes I did."
"OK now do what you did to make it move up only do it bigger!"

FINALLY SUCCESS, she hit 1500 ml's on the I.S. and her predicted is only 2000 ml's so she is over the 50%, NO EZPAP, whoo hoo.


The next day I come to work and find out the day shift was having the same issues that I did with this patient, so like I said she either has:

A) No Clue
or
B) She is jacking with us.

Either way I didn't have to see her again. You can always find humor in this job. Actually I think you have to have a sense of humor to work this job.


Thanks for reading.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

People will always be nuts. Welcome back.

Rick Frea said...

Excellent post. I even laughed. Fortunately we only have to do the IS instruct here, and then we're done. So when I get clueless patients I give up on the IS alltogether and work on C&DB instead.

You're right, gotta have a sensahumor.

Breathingthroughschool said...

Glad your back!