Before I commence this evening’s rant-a-thon I thought I ought to share with you some fun links. Lauren waved (the world) at the Retro Encabulator – which is excellent for IT geek humour; and for those of you of an automotive bent, here’s a similar video for the Turbo Encabulator.
Anyhow, so, today you could tell I’d done a 6 day stretch. 6 days isn’t the worst; someone else is doing 8 and 9 is not unheard of; but after 6 it does start to tell in my patience. And when someone is sucking up all your time and they’re not actually ill? Oh, did I want to scream. Actually, what I wanted to do was to tell the person to pull themselves to-fracking-gether and get out of a bed which could be being occupied by someone who actually needed to be there.
What really strongly indicated that she was actually not ill was the amazing effect of the placebo. The ambo crew had put a cannula in to give one drug; but before they’d given it they’d flushed it with normal saline (salty water); this apparently improved her pain. Normally I’m very careful to say that when I’m flushing the cannula it’s “just salty water”. Today I simply didn’t say, I explained that I needed to give some drugs through her cannula, and then having got her consent I gave it. I didn’t intimate that it was anything, I just flushed the cannula and then gave the IV Paracetamol.
See, I understand; sometimes there will be people that I don’t really think are sick who actually are; which is why I’m really careful not to differentiate. I will make mistakes, people will be in pain and not show it, sometimes the pain will *actually* have gone by the time I see them, and sometimes people will be sick and it’ll not be obvious; but I’m fairly good at spotting pain – and people who are in pain tend (though not always) to move in a way which is guarded. I can’t be sure if it’s the IV Paracetamol, the injection I gave, or the Normal Saline which made her able to walk about and not be in such severe pain; but I suspect that three lots of N/Saline’d’ve done the job just as well.
Thankfully, someone else took her and thoroughly explained the fact that she needed to leave because if she’s got back-pain problems she needs to see the GP because as she’d kept me away from my patients who were actually sick, she’d used up my little reserve of patience and I really wanted to tell her to get out of the department. *sighs*.
