January 7, 2013, 1:52 pm
Oh! what I would give for a paper chart!
…for a clean, crisp empty sheet of nursing notes!
Oh! to see perfectly horizontal black lines, inviting me to hover my delicately-balanced pen above, poised to create a work of art.
Oh! to eloquently describe my nursing care in cursive so beautiful my great-grandmother would cry.
What would I give?
I’d give my (expletive) Cerner workstation a shove into the San Francisco Bay.
Yeah, we finally entered the 21st century at work.
Computerized charting. What a crock.
Boy, do I have a rant all ready to explode for this one.
But that’s the next post.
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What do you do when you lose your voice?
Your blogging voice.
It used to be so easy.
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When I started blogging in 2005 I just talked about what it was like to be a staff nurse. That was my “voice.” The stories flowed off the keyboard. Blogging was a creative outlet.
Blogging was fun.
Today, an old-school Catholic nun sits in my head, rapping my knuckles with her ruler if I even consider posting something that isn’t “prim and proper”.
The trouble is, “prim and proper” is not my style.
Now, I can write “prim and proper” with the best of them. But a blog is not the place for that. This blog is not the place for that.
And to be honest with you, I have not been all that enamored of health care in the last year or so, of watching my wonderful small community hospital become an appendage of a corporate behemoth. Or of reading about health care in terms of partisan politics every single day in the news.
I wanted to rant and blog. But I didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. Sister Super-ego wanted prim and proper, but I couldn’t produce prim and proper.
So when I went to “speak,” nothing came out.
*****
I don’t know where Sister Super-ego came from, or where I got the idea that everything produced on this blog had to look like it was ready for a peer-reviewed journal.
This blog never was and never will be a “professional publication”.
It’s just the story of the life and times of an emergency department nurse.
Time to get back to my “roots.”
If anyone is still reading, thanks for hanging in there! 
October 29, 2012, 11:03 am
Apparently even one-eyed alien nurses wear caps!
For the life of me, I cannot remember where I found this photo, but it looks straight out of Doctor Who circa 1963.
There were nurses in one episode of Doctor Who: a race of humanoid feline nuns called the Sisters of Plentitude.
I was about to say, “You can’t make this stuff up!”, but obviously someone did!
*****
You would think that after 18 years online and more than 7 years as a blogger, I’d know better.
But no, I actually fell for a scam this week.
No money changed hands.
Worse.
They ticked me off.
*****
It has been a long time since any sort of scam-type email has come through to me.
They have improved! They don’t misspell. The grammar almost passes muster.
It seems a company wanted to use “Emergiblog” as their domain name and keyword in….wait for it…China/Asia.
You’re already smacking your head, right? “Doh!” Ding, ding, ding….scam!
The email wanted to know if I was connected with this “company” and if they were my distributor in China/Asia, because there was a conflict.
The company is a UK construction firm.
*****
Hmmmm.
I sent a cordial email back that said (a) I was not affiliated with the company who wanted the name and (b) I did not want the name registered by anyone else and (c) it would be a cold day in hell before I’d give the name up.
And that was that.
*****
Then, a second email arrives from a Yahoo address in….wait for it….China (with broken English, “Dear Sirs,”…ding…ding…ding!) saying basically, we got your message and we are going to do it anyway even though the guy who sent the first email advises us to find another name.
Okay….now you’ve done it.
Now you have pissed…me…off.
And you do not want to piss….me….off….
*****
The first rule of internet correspondence is that one remains cordial.
So, I sent a cordial response stating “oh, HELL no,” indicating that legal representation was being obtained.
You can’t swing a cat two feet in this family without hitting enough lawyers to form a firm.
It wouldn’t be hard to get exactly what I need.
But…
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I decided to let Web-guy extraordinaire, Shane, know what was happening.
About ten seconds later, I got the response:
“Oldest scam in the book.”
Followed by my Facebook blogger pals telling me the same thing.
How could I not have seen this?
It was only as large as a neon, freaking billboard!
I smacked my head so hard I had LOC for ten minutes.
*****
It won’t happen again.
I’m chagrined it happened at all.
How embarrassing.
The only consolation is that the threat to my blog identity brought out my killer instinct, even if I’m not blogging as much as I would like to.
One does not mess with another’s domain name.
It just isn’t done.
July 14, 2012, 12:38 am
I love my co-workers.
When things get absurd and all I want to do is smack my head, they make me laugh.
Case-in-point:
We were informed that Half-and-Half would no longer be provided to staff or patients. Those choosing to use creamer in their coffee would be offered Coffee-Mate, or could choose to “BYOH&H.”
“Corporate” decided this would make a good cost-cutting measure.
*****
“Corporate” is like the “Not Me” character in the “Family Circus” comic. Blamed for everything, but never actually seen.
Normally, this would have engendered an eye-rolling, how-much-money-do-they-think-they-will-save, 5-minute conversation and that would have been that.
However, the email noted:
Half-and-Half would be available for all physicians and administrators!
Say what?
*****
I thought it was a joke. It sounded like a “Scrubs” script where Carla and Lavern refuse to let the doctors have break room coffee until they get their Half-and-Half back.
But, no.
This was legit.
And I was pissed.
Not at the loss of the half-and-half, but the principle of the thing.
Surely the idea that physicians and administrators were more important than staff or patients, or were superior groups to be coddled and pampered was a remnant of the 1950s, something to be looked back on as a relic of a less enlightened time!
Er, no.
*****
This was such a slap in the face to the staff, and in writing, no less!
Combined with everything “Corporate” has done (or been blamed for) over the last year, it was just too much.
Then one day, I walk in and see the “Will Work for Half-and-Half” jar.
With donations in it!
I LOL’s until I had chest pain.
That’s the kind of humor that permeates my department.
And that is why I work where I work.
Working with colleagues who have a great collective sense of humor is worth its weight in…well, Half-and-Half!!!!
And right now, that stuff is like gold in my ER….
