Just call me Porkie, MD
Monday, December 7th, 2009It was a busy evening last night at the hospital. Things were hopping, but unfortunately, I was not. I was, well, we’re friends here, I was just pokey! I looked back at last night, and tried to figure out what made me so gol’ dang slow. Here goes:
- Fatigue. I didn’t have my game face on, and I had lost my groove. Maybe I needed Josh McDaniels (the potty mouthed Denver Bronco coach) exhorting me to get my f*bomb behind in gear.
- Chatty patients with lots of medical problems that were actually quite funny. Like the elderly gentleman that kept calling me “Dr. Porkie”. Finally he looked at my name tag and exclaimed, “You’re not Dr. Porkie! You’re Dr. Pookie!” And guess what, he was sent in for confusion. Any patient that can figure out my name isn’t Dr. Porkie is definitely not confused in my book!
- Tons of pages, some appropriate, some not–like the one about the low glucose at 5 am, when it was 7:30 pm, some 14 hours later! “I just didn’t have time to call until now,” said the regulation following nurse.
- Finding ways to manage the mess we call health care delivery. Example: the chronically ill patient who needed nursing home placement until her knee surgery, but couldn’t get placed because of some SNAFU with medicare. Welcome to health care dollar wasteland! And no, I never found a way to get the patient to a SNIF, and ended up admitting her. God Bless the case manager for trying for 8 hours, though!
- Lack of medical records. One patient from a SNIF had no medication lists, because the family gives the patient medications daily. And of course, I tried all the phone numbers listed for the family, but no one was home. The charming but demented patient had no idea of what medications he was on.
- A “code blue”–not much I can do about this one!
- Slow brain syndrome–my fancy new diagnosis for one fatigued doctor, working too much, with too little coffee, in a strangled health care system on a busy night.
Be careful out there! Keep the cappuccinos coming!
