Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Sprint finish
WEll i'm finally puttin' the boogie on my apps. For two weeks I've had Loma Linda, Louisville, Georgetown, OHSU and McGill waiting to be finished and submitted. I finally just submitted Louisville. I don't really think they'll like me too much since I'm not a poor apalachian hick( they asked a lot of questions about underserved status, how big my hometown was, how much education my parents have, how much money they make, did I put myself through college etc.). I finally declared Loma Linda done today as well and submitted their app. I think I'm not going to finish applying to GT since they want a one page essay detailing why I want to go there. Since I can't think of any compelling reasons, and their curriculum is pretty non-descript, I think I'l forgo the $130 donation and apply elsewhere. It's not that I can't write an essay, It's just that I don't want it badly enough that the essay I write will get me in. Auugh. I'm just muddling things now. I just finished McGill's online portion, but there is A LOT of paperwork that I have to send in also. They want my AP, IB, SAT (who cares? i finished my undergrad! this stuff is OLD NEWS), plus some forms to go with my letters of rec. Gotta run
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The Perforated Testicle
Yes, it is time for Dr. Fingerbottom's ramblings. He has changed his name, due to a syndicated column published by Aaron Tabacco who pioneered the Dr. Longfinger's name. In the interest of avoiding a copyright infringement suite, my sarcastic doctor is now Dr. Fingerbottom, Dr. Longfinger's partner (in a professional relationship).
As I was fixin' to leave work today, a histology tech grabbed my coworker and me and said "you gotta see this!". Curious, we trotted over to histology lab. The tech, we shall call him "Pooch", because I misheard his name and that's what it sounded like, showed as a small recepticle with 5 small pins in it. They looked about like those pins that hold your watchband to the watch. "Where do you think these came from ?" he asked. Umm, I give, where? "A man's testicle", he deadpanned. This begs the question: 'what was he doing? " He supposedly hopped into bed, where some pins were hidden in the sheets", Pooch answered. If you believe that, I have some clichés to tell you about real estate in florida and bridges which are for sale.
the moral of the story: If you're going to pierce your testicles, please, please, please, use a needle that's long enough to come out the other side. If you don't, I hope you're smart enough to realize that after the first one doesn't go all the way through, you don't have to try four others of identical lengt to achieve the same result.
Latin disclaimer: Caveat Lector: I am suspicious of this type of injury. The man's story could be entirely plausible. He might have mistakenly placed his pincushion in the bed, while performing some minor surgery on his favorite french-cuffed dress shirt. After succesfully repairing the beloved clothing, he was exulting at the prospect of donning the garment for tomorrow's gainful employement. He gleefully hopped into bed, so as to hasten the approaching dawn. To his ghastlly surprise, there was the pincushion, which, to his horror bit him in the You Know What. He must have rushed down to the ER, had the Pins of Inadvertant Perforation (PIP's to those in the medical field) removed and gone to work in the newly refurbished oxford cloth dress shirt.
More latin: Arma Virumque Cano, or " I sing of the man who might have pierced his testicles by accident, but who probably did not"
Still more latin: Yo No Soy Marinero, Soy Capitan, Soy Capitan. Or " Et tu Brutus, alla gallia in tres partitas divisa est" which, to those of us in english means "Brutus, where can I get some good cheap lares and penates for my penthouse domus?
As I was fixin' to leave work today, a histology tech grabbed my coworker and me and said "you gotta see this!". Curious, we trotted over to histology lab. The tech, we shall call him "Pooch", because I misheard his name and that's what it sounded like, showed as a small recepticle with 5 small pins in it. They looked about like those pins that hold your watchband to the watch. "Where do you think these came from ?" he asked. Umm, I give, where? "A man's testicle", he deadpanned. This begs the question: 'what was he doing? " He supposedly hopped into bed, where some pins were hidden in the sheets", Pooch answered. If you believe that, I have some clichés to tell you about real estate in florida and bridges which are for sale.
the moral of the story: If you're going to pierce your testicles, please, please, please, use a needle that's long enough to come out the other side. If you don't, I hope you're smart enough to realize that after the first one doesn't go all the way through, you don't have to try four others of identical lengt to achieve the same result.
Latin disclaimer: Caveat Lector: I am suspicious of this type of injury. The man's story could be entirely plausible. He might have mistakenly placed his pincushion in the bed, while performing some minor surgery on his favorite french-cuffed dress shirt. After succesfully repairing the beloved clothing, he was exulting at the prospect of donning the garment for tomorrow's gainful employement. He gleefully hopped into bed, so as to hasten the approaching dawn. To his ghastlly surprise, there was the pincushion, which, to his horror bit him in the You Know What. He must have rushed down to the ER, had the Pins of Inadvertant Perforation (PIP's to those in the medical field) removed and gone to work in the newly refurbished oxford cloth dress shirt.
More latin: Arma Virumque Cano, or " I sing of the man who might have pierced his testicles by accident, but who probably did not"
Still more latin: Yo No Soy Marinero, Soy Capitan, Soy Capitan. Or " Et tu Brutus, alla gallia in tres partitas divisa est" which, to those of us in english means "Brutus, where can I get some good cheap lares and penates for my penthouse domus?
Friday, August 18, 2006
The Stim Test
Lest, by some slight of fate, I have actually accrued an interested and critical readership to my ramblings, (*shameless trolling for comments!*), and said readers are nurses, let me remind you, that, in general, I hold nurses in the highest regards. WITH A FEW MORONIC EXCECPTIONS. SO, here we go, I will regale you with yet another tale of blundering idiocy on the hospital floor.
'Twas brillig, and the slithey toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All ... No, no, that's all wrong. That was how I slew the Jabberwocky. Beware of the JubJub bird and Shun the Frumious Bandersnatch was the moral of that tale.
Ahh yes. Wednesday morning, 'twas canvas time on a darkened 3 main. I was pushing my wobbly cart through the corridors, on my way to the next patient. It was a cortisol stim test. For the uninitiated, who have not yet been shaved and forced to prance around San Diego (another story for another time), I shall succinctly explain the cortisol stim test. Basically, the doc wants to know how the patient responds to teh presence of teh hormone cortisol. The lab draws a baseline leve, the nurse injects IV ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone), we come back to draw EXACTLY 30 minutes later, and again 1 hour after the baseline was drawn. Not rocket science. The toughest part actually, is to get there on time. Before I drew the baseline, I checked with the nurse that we were in fact doing a stim test and not a simple cort level becasue I didn't have the orders which would have indicated a stim test. She said, 'yes, we are doing a stim test'. I asked "do you have the injection ready for when I'm done (slight cockiness that I would in fact get the patient)". OK. "I'll inject it a half hour from now". NO. I don't htink that's how this usually works, shielding myself from some possible exception. "Let's see what the chart says, she suggested". Flipping through the pages, we found a blurry flowchart from pharmacy, detailing the exact protocol for stimtests which I outlined previously. Turning some more pages to make sure the doctor didn't order some exotic exception, we found the written order "perform ACTH stimulation test, per pharmacy protocol" In other words, do exactly as I have already said. I thought that three explanations were sufficient. "I'm going to draw the patient" I said. Ok, she replied, when you're done, I'll give the injection. GOOD, i thought, now we're getting somewhere. As I left the room, baseline blood in hand, she said, "see you in a half hour", which, to me, meant that she was now going to give the injection and we would proceed as planned. I continued my merry way. Since the lab called me away to another floor in the meantime, I knew someone else was going to finish the stim test. Once I got to the lab, however, word came back that the dolt nurse had waited the half hour she had promised to, even after going through the procedure in excruciating detail. SO, the whole thing had to start again, since the baseline I had drawn was worthless. WHAT THE CRAP DO YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL? I MEAN COME ON!!!!! We read the orders from pharmacy. We read the docs orders. I explained how it works. All of this took place in less than 5 minutes. Yet, within 7 minutes, she had somehow learned A TOTALLY NEW PROTOCOL and ruined what work I had done. AUUUUGHHH. I swear, if I"m ever an elected official, I will see to it that all correspondance schoools that offer "nursing degrees online" are disavowed and de-credentialled.
'Twas brillig, and the slithey toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All ... No, no, that's all wrong. That was how I slew the Jabberwocky. Beware of the JubJub bird and Shun the Frumious Bandersnatch was the moral of that tale.
Ahh yes. Wednesday morning, 'twas canvas time on a darkened 3 main. I was pushing my wobbly cart through the corridors, on my way to the next patient. It was a cortisol stim test. For the uninitiated, who have not yet been shaved and forced to prance around San Diego (another story for another time), I shall succinctly explain the cortisol stim test. Basically, the doc wants to know how the patient responds to teh presence of teh hormone cortisol. The lab draws a baseline leve, the nurse injects IV ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone), we come back to draw EXACTLY 30 minutes later, and again 1 hour after the baseline was drawn. Not rocket science. The toughest part actually, is to get there on time. Before I drew the baseline, I checked with the nurse that we were in fact doing a stim test and not a simple cort level becasue I didn't have the orders which would have indicated a stim test. She said, 'yes, we are doing a stim test'. I asked "do you have the injection ready for when I'm done (slight cockiness that I would in fact get the patient)". OK. "I'll inject it a half hour from now". NO. I don't htink that's how this usually works, shielding myself from some possible exception. "Let's see what the chart says, she suggested". Flipping through the pages, we found a blurry flowchart from pharmacy, detailing the exact protocol for stimtests which I outlined previously. Turning some more pages to make sure the doctor didn't order some exotic exception, we found the written order "perform ACTH stimulation test, per pharmacy protocol" In other words, do exactly as I have already said. I thought that three explanations were sufficient. "I'm going to draw the patient" I said. Ok, she replied, when you're done, I'll give the injection. GOOD, i thought, now we're getting somewhere. As I left the room, baseline blood in hand, she said, "see you in a half hour", which, to me, meant that she was now going to give the injection and we would proceed as planned. I continued my merry way. Since the lab called me away to another floor in the meantime, I knew someone else was going to finish the stim test. Once I got to the lab, however, word came back that the dolt nurse had waited the half hour she had promised to, even after going through the procedure in excruciating detail. SO, the whole thing had to start again, since the baseline I had drawn was worthless. WHAT THE CRAP DO YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL? I MEAN COME ON!!!!! We read the orders from pharmacy. We read the docs orders. I explained how it works. All of this took place in less than 5 minutes. Yet, within 7 minutes, she had somehow learned A TOTALLY NEW PROTOCOL and ruined what work I had done. AUUUUGHHH. I swear, if I"m ever an elected official, I will see to it that all correspondance schoools that offer "nursing degrees online" are disavowed and de-credentialled.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
I hate corporate english
So, this is a direct quote from teh Temple University SOM website regarding the Geisinger Hospital satelite campus for medical education:
"The program enters students into the new paradigm of patient-centered care, an information environment that provides high-exposure, transparent outcomes data on quality and cost, and a consumer/regulatory base that is demanding this information. "
KEEP THE CORPORATE CONSULTANTS AWAY FROM ANYTHING THAT NORMAL PEOPLE MUST READ. I think when people get their MBA's they are issued a 20 sided die with words like "paradigm", "transparent", "outcomes-based", "customer oriented", "impact (as a verb)" which they employ more or less randomly with prose that reads like the tripe above.
"The program enters students into the new paradigm of patient-centered care, an information environment that provides high-exposure, transparent outcomes data on quality and cost, and a consumer/regulatory base that is demanding this information. "
KEEP THE CORPORATE CONSULTANTS AWAY FROM ANYTHING THAT NORMAL PEOPLE MUST READ. I think when people get their MBA's they are issued a 20 sided die with words like "paradigm", "transparent", "outcomes-based", "customer oriented", "impact (as a verb)" which they employ more or less randomly with prose that reads like the tripe above.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Forms = Great. Essays = Not Great
I'm filling out secondaries, and I've decided that the best ones are the forms that consist of questions like "have you ever attended University X?" ,"Have any of your family members?" "are you a convicted felon?" " Can you send us $80?"
Thank you and have a nice day!
Much better than " tell us something you think we should know in 500 letters or less (yes, letters, not words)"
checklist:
Submitted:
Penn State
St. Louis U
Medical College of Wisc
Thank you and have a nice day!
Much better than " tell us something you think we should know in 500 letters or less (yes, letters, not words)"
checklist:
Submitted:
Penn State
St. Louis U
Medical College of Wisc
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