Why ENA Sucks - This Week

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F**king It Up By The Numbers

 

Today's tale of How Not To Do Your Jobs:

(PITTSBURGH) Eugene Wright of Meadville says police and medical workers got the wrong man when they transported him to the local hospital this summer and injected him with anti-psychotic drugs against his will, thinking he was someone else.
"The experience that I went through, this should never happen to anybody. It's very simple to check ID," said Mr. Wright, 63. "These people need to be held responsible."
Mr. Wright and his wife, Carolyn Wright, made their allegations in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday against the police in Meadville, the Meadville Medical Center and a local crisis center, Stairways Behavioral Health.
Mr. Wright had the misfortune to have the same name as another Eugene Wright, a psychiatric patient who police said had issued threats at his doctor's office, his suit says.

RTWT.

Long story short: they did, in fact, have the wrong guy.
"But they were acting in good faith!"

Yeah, right up until that failure to look in his wallet, or call his employer or the ortho doc to confirm they had the right guy- or not. Times everyone from A to Z. No exercise of due dilligence equals gross negligence and depraved indifference to the consequences. And deserves a prison sentence.

So Innocent Bystander gets hauled away to the nuthouse.

And now, I'm the Pittsburgh D.A., by the power of the Internet.
What happens?

Officers Sh*thead and F**kstick are suspended without pay for battery, kidnapping, false arrest, false imprisonment, criminal conspiracy to do all of the above, and making terroristic threats. They deserve to be fired for cause, and referred for criminal prosecution.
The representative for Stairways who accompanied them gets charged with making a false report, criminal negligence, and accessory to all the charges against the Meadville PD.
Any nurse(s) who gave the medications has their license suspended, and is charged with criminal medical battery on a patient and gross professional negligence, along with false arrest and false imprisonment. Their license(s) gets revoked by their state board, and they get referred to criminal prosecution.
Ditto for the ordering MD at the hospital.
All of the above: the PD, the crisis center, the hospital, the nurse(s), the doctor, get civilly sued for the maximum penalty that a jury will accept. The chief of police, and the CEOs of both health facilities are also named as co-defendants civilly and criminally for gross incompetence and criminal negligence leading to battery, medical battery, kidnapping, false arrest, and false imprisonment.
Oh, and sue the orthopedic doctor and his staff for failing to make a complete report. They deserve some love in this too. 
The cardinal rule I've observed in a couple of decades in the E.D. is that the more you're arguing with someone, the exponentially greater the likelihood that they're right and you're not. Break the chain early, and double check, especially when it's as easy at it would have been here to sort it out with certainty.

It was the responsibility of the nurse treating that patient to make sure he/she had the right patient - not just the one the doctor pointed at, but that he was indeed the mental health case in question. When nothing more than an ID check and one phone call would have raised the question and undone the entire chain of errors here, there's no excuse, for anyone involved. Some criminal arrests and indictments would drive that home satisfactorily.

I don't have the medical record info here, but if the patient was not in any way an imminent danger to himself or others in the hospital, there was no reason whatsoever to administer ANY medications to him under any circumstances. If the record shows that he did nothing but raise the obviously valid legal and medical point that they had the wrong guy, and was not physically combative, they should be fired and sued just for that act. That's medical battery all by itself, even if he was the correct whackjob in question.

There should be five to ten people facing actual state and federal prison for this incident, and the plaintiff deserves a mid eight-figure payout to drive the point well home.
And then every staff member of the PD, crisis center, and hospital, down to admitting clerks, has to undergo mandatory training by the state, at their employers' expense, on properly validating the ID of a mental health patient in crisis adequately and properly.

When you have someone frothing and barking on scene, that problem is solved. But when you send your minions to round up people in the community, and end up kidnapping the innocent off the streets and hooking them up as psych cases, it needs to leave a mark, in both the criminal and civil divisions of the superior court, and at the federal level. (Posit this guy as someone with a valid CCW and carrying when the cops roll up, and let your mind wander how it turns out. One or more people dead, because a clerk had his/her head up their own ass. That's why everyone who screwed this pooch should be fired and criminally prosecuted, and not just sued into poverty.)

This is utterly unconscionable and inexcusable behavior at every level, and several people need a long, quiet time in a small gray cell - let alone some frequent group sex sessions in pound-you-in-the-ass-prison - to contemplate the responsibilities of their former jobs, and the rights of the people they're supposed to be serving.

After that, they can get jobs greeting people at f**king WalMart for all I care.
They're shitbags as human beings, and if it were my relative or yours involved, the full measure of justice in this kind of case would require baseball bats and some emergency dental and orthopedic surgery. Blowtorches and pliers might possibly be involved.

Clipboard Commandos

                                 Almost actual size, but it's not this new and shiny here.

New gig at Shoestring Hospital, in Teeny Weeny ER.

Small, hella-busy, still same old fun.

Except for (wait for it) all the ancillary BS hoops to jump through to start.
Wait, it gets better.

So busy and short-handed, your contract started yesterday. (What's that? You never signed one? Don't worry, we'll get around to that...in a coupla months. Maybe.)
But here's your log-in to complete the same 42 online modules (on my time and nickel, apparently) before you start.
Because the ones you just did for our sister hospital in the same system don't count, because the left hand and the right hand in this fucktarded corporate lash-up don't talk to each other.

How...special.

So, after pounding my head against the monitor for three weeks trying to follow their instructions, it turns out they assigned me no account, so couldn't log-in to the education site, which helpdesk line is so secret, no one in the entire hospital knows it or has ever heard of it, until we reach the threats-of-suspension stage, and it will suddenly leave them exactly as short-staffed as they were before I started, and suddenly shit gets real for them.

Whereupon they "suddenly" discover the secret helpdesk number, and I then find out all the courses they assigned to me in the first place three weeks ago were the wrong ones, and not the ones they've been telling me that I haven't completed, because I couldn't log in, and they never assigned the right ones in the first place.

Because they're all a bunch of chronically and blisteringly incompetent fuckups.

This is my shocked face. I didn't name this place Shoestring Hospital and Teeny Weeny ER for nothing, and Incompetence is one of the core values here.

If I did nursing like they do administration, the dead bodies would be piled up around here like firewood. (And, in all likelihood, they soon will be anyways. But that's another ten stories.)

This will be a short contract. If they ever give me one to sign before I finish it.

And they wonder why they can't find anyone besides brand new grads desperate for a job to become full-time staff? And why they all leave after 366 days?

Hot Tip For Drug-Seeking Posers

Dear @$$hole military veteran wannabees:

If you're going to try and sell yourself as a tragically drug-addicted PTSD-suffering veteran of the Vietnam War, you might want to either
A) CRACK A FRIGGIN' BOOK, or
B) Come up with a better birth certificate.

Specifically, when your date of birth reveals that you would have been aged 15 years when the Vietnam War ended, it's probably not a hot idea to try BSing your sad tale, laced with requests for more pain meds, by piggybacking it onto your tragic story of heroin addiction caused by all that heavy incoming fire and buddies blown away you suffered during your imaginary service there in such exotic places as Gang Bang Wang and Sum Dum Ly.

Especially when your nurse is a military veteran, with a keen lifelong interest in history in general, and military history in particular, and oh yeah, an older brother who spent the summer after high school ducking rockets on the DMZ in '67, and turning his parents' hair prematurely grey, until he returned home with all his original body parts and no extra orifices.

And you should probably ask for the hospital chaplain to visit you, to offer thanks to a merciful God on your behalf that it's both unethical, and against the best practices in the employee handbook, for me to give you the dick-punching you so richly deserve.

Save your Special Agent Orange resume for the other dope addict losers under your bridge. As a very wise person once wrote, "A lie is a poor way to say "hello".

And the other shoe drops...

My vacay was lovely. As will become apparent, I should have stayed there.
(If you have the chance for two weeks on Maui, I highly recommend it. Anytime.)

Upon my return, I found out the reason they were so cheerful about letting me have time off for the holidays, was that in their ceaseless efforts to not go broke implementing ObamaCare, my facility will be "re-organizing", and wished me their best in securing another position. Just. Like. That.
The fact that I'm experienced, at the top pay tier, and recently passed the half-century milestone were all purely coincidental, they assured me. And I have a bridge for sale too, right next to some beachfront property in Kansas.

Step Two was dusting off the resume, and getting a gig with any number of nursing registry agencies hereabouts that are swamped with the need for ED nurses locally, because for some reason, there are a ton of facilities with openings for non-permanent personnel on all shifts. Everywhere.
Doubtless this is just another purely random coincidence, I'm sure.

The sweetener is that they pay on average 10-20% more than my former employer, for doing the same job, and (after a few months not there), even including my former hospital home. So they laid me off to get me a raise, and set my own days and hours forever, including no more holidays at my discretion, and all it cost them was any shred of loyalty or concern for their best interests I might have had after the last ten-plus years in their trenches.

Such a deal.
The other bummer was instantly being ripped from amongst the greatest bunch of people, doctors, nurses, and staff, I've ever worked with. $#!^ happens.

The fly in the ointment was that I needed to do all the pre-employment hoops I haven't jumped through since Clinton was president, and dig up paperwork from the late Pleistocene, as well as document my decades of competencies in everything, from scratch. (Satisfying my inner hyper-anal control freak, I have so far aced everything they've thrown at me. And thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I can do this stuff online, at home, in my pajamas, whenever I feel the urge. Yay, 21st century technology.)

During which, it turns out that between eating like a teenager, no small amount of it grazing on craft service, and the very same two decades of dealing with nightshift ED work and the lovely people deposited on my gurneys, my blood pressure seems to have decided to translate into flight data from a space launch liftoff, after being textbook normal up to at least six months ago.

Oh goody. After a quarter-century in healthcare, I always wondered what it'd be like to be the patient. (Not.)

I have consequently been just a wee bit pre-occupied with securing gainful employment, and not having my head explode, while finding a regular physician for the first time since I was a teenager, managing new meds, and embarking on a new quest to burn off at least a decade of crap daily diet and not enough cross training. With my former health insurance a distant memory.

So the 20 extra pounds around my gut are my fault, and the ED is the ED, but a hearty "Fuck You" to president for-life? HopeyDopey, and his ceaseless efforts to destroy the 17% of the American economy that has been my career, by mucking up the revenue stream for all hospitals. The only silver linings are that having discovered my new health situation, I won't be stroking out from his upcoming State Of The Union, 'cuz I've got meds to fix that now, and because of totally screwing the pooch for the medical industry, there are suddenly no shortage of doctors happy to see me for cash-for-service, indefinitely.

Regular blogging will resume when the recent roller coaster comes in for a landing.

The fivefold teaching moments are thus:

The government is not here to help you. Ever.
Neither is your employer. Loyalty is for dogs. Their end of the contract comes when the paycheck clears. Anything else is icing on the cake, but don't count on it.
Keep your resume current and updated.
More veggies, less pizza.
More PT, sergeant, more PT. Because I miss the Daily Seven like BUDS candidates miss getting wet and sandy in January.

And if you thought I was a non-cheery cranky caustic SOB before all this needless personal drama,

GET OFF MY LAWN.

 

 

Back regularly as soon as I can. The medical chances of me shutting up on the internet are about 8 billion to 1, against.

Top. Men.

Remember these @$$clowns, doing the clean-up on Doctor Dickhead's digs after he went bowling?

(Buzzfeed, via Fox News) New York City paid a con man who defrauded distressed homeowners out of millions of dollars during the housing crisis nearly $50,000 dollars to decontaminate the apartment of its first Ebola patient, BuzzFeed News is reporting.
The city awarded Sal Pane and his Bio-Recovery the emergency contract to disinfect Dr. Craig Spencer’s Harlem apartment after the physician was diagnosed with the deadly disease in October.

 

But Pane’s clean-up truck bore permit numbers that belonged to a dead man, Buzzfeed said Thursday in a lengthy report. The website said the dead man’s grieving sister was duped by Pane into selling him the truck and the company’s name.
The dead man, Ron Gospodarski, ran a reputable company that had years of experience cleaning up anthrax sites and other danger zones. Buzzfeed said its investigation showed that at the height of the Ebola scare in New York, Pane went on TV claiming that experience as his own.
“Twenty-seven years” of experience he told one radio station. “Not my first rodeo.”
Buzzfeed said that 27 years ago Pane was 4 years old.

 

In 2008, Pane ran a Long Island company that took upfront fees to obtain mortgage loan modifications for homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure. He was sued by then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who accused Pane of running off with fees without helping any homeowners. A judge ordered him to pay $12.5 million in fines and restitution to his victims. He’s only paid back $62,000.
Buzzfeed said Pane also did a nine-month stretch in prison three years ago after a jury on Long Island found him guilty of driving drunk and impersonating a prosecutor.
Pane’s contract with the city to clean Dr. Spencer’s Harlem apartment reportedly paid him and his company $48,000.
The city Health Department said it was unaware of Pane’s background but defended Bio-Recovery’s work.
Buzzfeed said in a brief phone interview Pane denied running Bio-Recovery.  He also told the website, “Enjoy your smear campaign."

$50K from the NYFC Health Department to a bunch of shmoes with a truck and some blue barrels.

So, the obvious follow-up question is where sociopath Pane took the stuff his henchmen removed from Doctor Dickhead's apartment, and what they did with it.

NYFC officials haven't asked, and nobody's telling.

Splendiferous. If you thought pressure-washing the vomit was good, how about looting the doc's apartment, tossing the stuff in some vacant lot, and probably hocking the good stuff at local pawn shops, and then collecting a city check for burglary in plain sight?

I couldn't make this kind of stuff up if I tried. But I think I've seen it somewhere before...

World's Biggest Putz

 

And in NYFC, where that title truly means something!

So, Doctor Doofus is released, and in a manner worthy of jackholes everywhere, completely avoids any personal responsibility for his own jackassery in spreading chaos and panic to the entire Big Apple, and putting nearly 400 fellow New Yorkers on Ebola monitoring protocols for three weeks:

 “My early detection, reporting and now recovery from Ebola speaks to the effectiveness of the protocols that are in place for health staff returning from West Africa.”

No doubt Doctor Dickhead would have been detected, reported, treated, and recovered even earlier if only he hadn't
a) ignored his original symptoms for two days
b) trotted his stupid ass all over the Five Boroughs for two days, thus
c) exposing 357 or so other people to a deadly pathogen because of
d) his reckless disregard for public health and safety, and
e) his total failure to inform the police and health authorities, who
f) only learned of his infectious travels hither and yon after
g) querying his financial and subway pass records because he
h) never bothered to inform those authorities of his contacts.

Thanks a lot FUCKHEAD, you're a credit to people everywhere with shit for brains, and hopefully the NY Medical Board has a spine and some balls, and will be revoking your license to practice medicine for the next decade or so, until you come to Jesus, 'fess up, apologize, and spend some thoughtful time digging ditches, you selfish bastard. Hopefully the D.A. will look into criminal charges, and the 357 people inconvenienced by your antics will be helping themselves to every cent of your income for the rest of your life for the mental anguish suffered as a direct consequence of your failure to use any shred of professional judgment or common human sense. 

Walk tall, you embarrassment to your profession, and all humanity, and here's hoping the first fifty people you exposed meet you and kick you in the crotch, hard and repeatedly, while bystanders point and laugh, as a proper down payment on what you so richly deserve.

Apparently this is one of those instances where M.D. stands for

MONUMENTAL DUMBASS.

 

Now go to Home Depot, buy a crowbar, and see about popping your head out of your ass before you hurt yourself.

The Red Cross

In response to a notation over at Whitecoat's weekly update, where he noted "no more donations to the Red Cross".

For context you can read the whole thing, but the gist is that the Red Cross are being sneaky about where the money goes.

For context about my response, I was (note the past tense there) a volunteer with the organization for over a decade, including running multiple first aid stations within shelters immediately after the Northridge Earthquake, as well as working gratis on everything from rodeos to the Rose Parade, and was one of several monthly coordinators of event coverage for a group of nearly a hundred active medical providers. In addition, I was a certified instructor in Basic and Advanced First Aid and CPR, and took the gamut of courses for Disaster Operations, all before, during, and after attending nursing school and getting my RN license. So I have a wee bit of experience with the organization.

So, in the context of "Red Cross doesn't want to tell how they spent money collected from Big Disaster XX", allow me to furnish some insight.

When there's a metric crapload of human misery, and it makes national news, the pitch machine and collection apparatus at ARC goes into overdrive. This is because they are a completely NON-governmental organization, entirely funded through charitable donations. (Biomedical Services, AKA blood donation, is a separate financial entity, for good and for ill, going back to the early 1990s. It brings in a good chunk of change, and also a ginormous financial liability, both from fines, and from lawsuits, and the intent was to keep them in the Red Cross tent while splitting off the liability, to prevent the entire organization going under from lawsuits, esp. those from before the blood supply was tested for a host of previously unimagined nastiness.)

So far, so good.

People, most particularly Americans, really are human about seeing others getting raked over the coals of life. Even if people decided to build their houses in flood plains, tidal estuaries, or tinder-dry forests, they don't like to see anyone's whole life go up in a moment, and then watch them suffer and shiver. So they give.

Like numerous other organizations, the Red Cross funnels those contributions to help where it's needed. And now for the "But...".

BUT...sometimes certain disasters are more...photogenic, and TV-friendly, than others. Little kids with their toys strewn around the uprooted trees, along with their parents and siblings, and sitting on the curb crying, after some devastating tornado, tugs at heartstrings.

Kids sitting on the curb because the next door neighbors were meth-heads whose illegal lab burned down their ghetto tenement and made 40 people of limited means homeless, not so much.

But both need a helping hand just as much as the other.

So, in their wisdom, the Red Cross looks things over, and decides how much a given disaster will be funded. If donations are wildly higher than this, well and good. The extra money goes to pay for the little disasters that don't get donations rolling. And to funding the Red Cross itself, from staff members, to buildings, to materials for training, and hopefully, to keeping some stock of supplies prepositioned in places in every chapter in case something really earth-shattering, like a 8.0 earthquake, Cat V tornado or hurricane, or the Mississippi flooding to 500-year flood levels happens.

Anybody with a lick of common sense knows why this is both prudent, and necessary.

Now for the back of the coin.

The Red Cross is a charity. It's driven by volunteerism, of which there is no shortage, and a certain amount of organizational altruism, which documentedly exists.
But it is, let's face it, a business that has to pay rents and meet payroll, and exist next year, thankyouverymuch.

And some number of the sort of folks who go to work for well-below-market salaries at a charity, rather than take any number of much better and better-paying jobs, are not your Bill Gates', Donald Trumps, or Jack Welches. Or even anything remotely like it, by and large, even allowing an occasional exception to the rule of gravity.

So even though the people who make the organization work are the sort of people who can do high finance in their day job at a Fortune 500 company, and still find time to show up to teach a Saturday class, or roll out at 3AM when a twister levels a neighborhood two zip codes away, the people who run things day to day, decide what gets done, plan, and administer all the functions of the organization are far too frequently people who'd be woefully under qualified to be even assistant night managers at Party World or McDonald's.

And yet, they see that they have The Clipboard, and are In Charge, and so they foolishly assume that makes them smarter and more talented than the volunteers who make their responses and programs possible, both personally and financially.

And I'm here to tell you, it just ain't so.

Organizationally, the Red Cross has been living vicariously off of goodwill engendered by the organization since Clara Barton's day, and the fumes in that gas tank are getting pretty thin.

So it's certainly well within the realm of possibility that senior management (which generally comes from local management, which as Will Rogers noted are simply the town bandits send to raid HQ) may have decided that the peons out from somewhere beyond their offices don't need to know how and where the organization spends their money. IMHO, that's a jackassical choice, and without tying personal salary to names, everybody and every expenditures from the top down should be publicly available on their website 24/7. That it isn't is very likely either a sign that they think themselves beyond such an open accounting, or the truth would embarrass the organization. Or both. I don't know which, but I have my suspicions based on past experiences.

But it's their ball, and their rules.

I'm not saying don't donate to them. They do a tremendous amount of good work, and generally in a way far superior than government minions do so. They do decent training, the costs are a bargain, and hordes of pool lifeguards and medics got their start there. Hell, I worked for them for years learning the healthcare business long before I got to where I could get paid for it, and I'll always hold a warm spot in my heart for an organization whose emblem I wore.

But you should know what you're dealing with, and what you're getting for your money.
And eventually, if they don't knock off the silly stuff, they're going to wake up one day and find out that somebody else, say, the Salvation Army, has started doing first aid and lifeguard training, and that the S.A. already does feeding and sheltering better, and has done so 24/7/365 around the world for 100 years, and Red Cross will be out on the curb with the other unfortunates in a New York minute, wondering what happened to them.

Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy - In every organization there are two kinds of people: those committed to the mission of the organization, and those committed to the organization itself. While the mission-committed people pursue the mission, the organization-committed people take over the organization. Then the mission-committed people tend to become discouraged and leave.

Getting Cold Feet

On just another summer night at Callous Bastard Hospital, long after the fast track section is closed, Young Dude (with gf) come in with chief complaint of "foot pain".

So, hey, at least it's not a train wreck full-code from the local Con(next of kin out of their money while providing no actual care)valescent Hospital. Triage basically just did vitals and dropped him off, which is cool since they're busier and I only have two other patients, so I mosey in to get the details on why he's here at 3AM.

"Can't sleep, my feet are killing me."

So, after getting him to doff everything below the waist except underpants, and put on the stylish gown, I pop back in and have a quick look at the troublesome appendages before the doc gets in.

And the guy has ten toes that are cold, stiff as a board, waxy, and with large white tips on all ten toes and larger sections on the two smallest toes on each foot, in the most textbook-perfect visual appearance of frostbite it's ever been my displeasure to see live and in person.

Digging deeper, it transpires that he's an employee at one of the local food distribution warehouses, having just finished his second shift job there at midnight. Where he was ordered to clean out the frozen food freezer (the size of most suburban house lots). Despite protests that he hadn't been trained, and sans any sort of appropriate protective gear which OSHA, CalOSHA, Union rules, company policies, and mothereffing common sense dictate, his Idiot Boss, Mr. Sumdood, sent 20-something to shovel ankle deep frozen slush in 0-degree temps for 8 hours in his Van's tennis shoes, cotton socks, jeans, a t-shirt, and a windbreaker. And being a good (though perhaps not very clever nor worldly-wise) employee, Young Dude went and did his job.

Whereupon I send my truly fantastic tech to go fill a couple of splinting and casting chicken buckets (exactly what it sounds like) and fill them nearly full of water that's comfortable but well north of body temp warm. All the sinks in the department helpfully being temperature-safetied for morons to past the point of common sense, the only actual warm water in the entire department is down the hall in our break room. He returns, and we begin rewarming our patient's frostbitten feet - generally a rare find in SoCal in the summer - and I go to let the doc know what the "foot pain" is in relation to.

He avoided surgery last I heard, but only just.
Working in an E.D., I generally don't have much use for lawyers, but for the second time in my nursing career, I advised patient and gf to start with his union shop steward, save copies of all his paperwork, and to assume that from this point out Great Big Grocery Chain, courtesy of Idiot Boss' tenuous grasp of common sense, had just bought the bill for this and all subsequent care, and that any further intransigence on the subject ought to be referred to legal counsel, as part of his have-a-nice-day departure lecture.

And told him he's off freezer duty for the foreseeable future.

Clearly the biggest morons aren't always the ones who actually come in to the department for care.

Bellyaching

"Flaming Hot Cheetos are bad, and lead to unnecessary ER visits."

Color me shocked! Shocked I say.

In other news, water is wet, fire burns, and it gets dark after sunset.

O, if only someone had perhaps mentioned this terrible affliction.

Oh wait, I did that, as has probably every nurse doing triage or treatment in any ED that sees kids with sign-in complaints for "abdominal pain" or "possible rectal bleeding."

But don't worry motherfathers, we buy our docs rubber gloves and surgilube by the case, so if you want your child serially introduced to the TSA standard pre-boarding rituals (and evidently, the Deming, NM PD Roadside Assistance Program), keep handing junior those little bags of flaming death, and see whether or not you pay my mortgage again this month.

Raping The Constitution - Just Another Day in Deming NM

(I'm cross-posting this, because there's way too much crossover applicability to the medical field going on here. - A.)

Caveat: Good cops are worth their body weight in gold. Bad ones can - and should - be melted down to make fishing sinkers.

"Welcome to Deming NM, where the only safe @$$holes wear badges!" - proposed sign for the Deming NM Chamber of Commerce to put up at city limits

Yes, I'm late getting to this, because everyone else is having so much fun with it.

First, the LINK.

Now, the highlights:

One Mr. Eckert, of southern New Mexico, having concluded his shopping at a local Wal-Mart last January 2nd, did a rolling not-quite-a-stop as he left the parking lot, and was immediately selected to donate to the town's tax coffers pulled over for a  moving violation by the Deming PD.
Whereupon, for this grave breach of public order and safety, he was ordered to exit the vehicle.
(WTF. Why?? For a ticket, all you need is a promise to appear, and normal observables for citing officers don't include the behavior of your ass muscles.){Update: Aha! Because their Talking Dog told them! More later.}

Whereupon, based on personal observation, and a career familiarity with proper buttocks etiquette, Officers Assclown and Dipshit decided that the driver was almost certainly clenching his cheeks to maintain an imaginary stash of illicit narcotics in his booty hideout.
Whereupon they contacted and received from a local graduate of New Mexico's finest internet law school and all-night taco stand judge a search warrant for the anus of the motorist in question.

Apparently in Luna County, NM, probable cause of no more than some jackassical officer's desire to have a peek up your ass is sufficient to set aside the entire Bill Of Rights.
There's doubtless a thumping sound coming from the vicinity of 77 graveyards as the signers of said document spin in their graves.

Our brave butt pirates in blue took him to a local Deming ER, whereupon the medical professional on duty told them not just no, but Hell NO! because performing such a procedure, warrant or no, was a violation of his professional ethics. Doctors typically bill separately from the hospital, so this guy's medical group should award him an on-the-spot 5-figure cash sum for sparing them the lawsuits and ridicule to follow, a sum that should be matched by the hospital out of sheer gratitude. And if the AMA has an Ethics prize, this unnamed doctor just won it for 2013, whether they acknowledge it or not.

Undeterred by such flawless ethical reasoning, Officers Assclown and Dipshit, assisted at some point by Officer Shitforbrains, and later joined by Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies Bumblefuck, Stumblefuck, and Bufflefuck, trundled the motorist outside the county limits (and the limits of the jurisdiction of said search warrant, nota bene) to the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City NM, in Hidalgo County, where the local disciples of Dr. Mengele were more than happy to use a search warrant from an alleged judge in another county as a pretext for an epic butt-fishing expedition.

As noted in the federal filing complaint and linked story, the motorist was then subjected to the following:

1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
{Nota bene that at this point, it ceased being a search, and the torture began. - A.}
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
{At this point chronologically, after failing to notice that the warrant itself was invalid in their locale, no one noticed that the time limit for said warrant had also expired even if it had been a valid warrant. Which it wasn't.}
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines.  No narcotics were found.
Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures.

This all took place in January 2013, and while it's a wonderful practical demonstration of Obamacare a few months early, like most of the activities of the current president, it's also a wee bit afoul of tiny details like the Bill of Rights and that pesky Constitution thingie.

My original response to that catalogue of nonsense was to a fellow online commentor who wondered why they didn't "just give him a dose of salts, and wait for the results" is as follows:

Because he has the legal right to refuse anything and everything. The only thing that can be done to anyone without their own consent in the ER is drawing blood for alcohol/drug tests, and administering emergency psych medication and strapping them down when they're actually violent and a danger to themselves or others (by which I mean swinging punches, kicking, and frothingly Hannibal Lecter bite-happy, not merely enamored with dropping F-bombs due to a lack of serotonin or social graces).

For everything else, they can tell everyone up to and including the President to "Eff off" with a mere 500 years of English Common Law and the full faith and credit of the U.S. Constitution on their side, something I regularly have to remind both cops and doctors of, but which our Legal Dept./Risk Mgmt. drones pound out in memos about 3X/yr.

Evidently somebody forgot to tell the local gauleiter, statspolizei, and the local disciples of Dr. Mengele in this instance that this sort of behavior was rather discredited post-1945.

Remember this when someone tells you the average h.s. grad doesn't need to know civics and political history for life beyond the 12th grade.

"These guys need to be locked up."

Letting the punishment fit the crime dictates that during confinement, they also be placed in restraints - by court order - and ass-raped by convicts repeatedly.
It's also funnier that way.

And for the record, every medical professional who didn't say not only "no" but "Hell no!" at the offending facility, from the lowest clerk up to the attending physician, just forfeited their licenses to practice, everything they own, and the next 10 years of their lives, at minimum.

Whether anyone admits it or not, this victim is on the short list to becoming the new co-owner of that entire hospital. This is a $20M judgement, and that's if it never gets to a jury's ears. He'd be crazy to settle for anything less than that, and if he has competent counsel, they've made that clear to him.

If it were me, I'd let them off with $5M in damages, provided they all stood in the town square for a week while any resident of the city limits was permitted to come up and kick them in the crotches as hard as they desired, once apiece.

And in all probability, Eckert was still issued a citation for the moving violation, and the medical center sent him a $6000 bill for sexually assaulting and humiliating him with glee multiple times, and showing a shockingly reckless disregard for anything we normally associate with professional ethics or common sense.
But, as countless late-night infomercials have told us, "Wait - there's MORE!"

They've done this before!

And come to find out, the original suspicion in both cases was the K-9 partner of Officer Shitforbrains: Leo the Ass-Sniffing Drug Dog!

Whose Crack Hound certification as a drug dog expired in 2011, at least a year before both incidents. Thus neither the dog, nor the probable cause, passed the smell test.

Not to mention that he doesn't know drugs from dirty underwear, and the false positives in both such notable occasions were ignored by everyone from Officer Shitforbrains to the Chief, because ass-raping both the citizenry and the Constitution in Deming and Hidalgo County is apparently so commonplace there that it doesn't even rate a yawn.

And notably, they again took their prospective butt-rapee to the same Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City. One might notice a pattern here.

To the disciple(s) of Dr. Mengele working at that particular would-be Nazi Concentration Camp Processing Station and Sexual Assault Training Camp brilliant example of what you get when you make doctors the tools of the government at Gila RMC, particularly the really really questionable ones who should probably have been flunked before licensure, and be dissecting cattle for the local butcher shop instead of practicing medicine last seen at Auschwitz circa 1944, and best left there:
Show some self-respect, and burn down your hospital, for the good of all mankind, not least of which includes the local citizenry.
And then, please, if you personally had anything whatsoever to do with participating in the above or similar incidents, with all dispatch, go home and hang yourselves, as a mark that you have some shred of personal honor and a sense of shame.
Or turn yourselves in and become State's Evidence witnesses, and offer a full confession. It's the very least you can do, and clearly long overdue.

And one wonders just how many times this sort of outrageous conduct will have to be repeated before the Governor of New Mexico directs the State Police to step in, suspend the entire city of Deming Police and Hidalgo County Sheriff's Departments, and take over both until further notice to restore the rule of law and order, after referring both and any other such matters (and if they've done this twice, they've probably done it twenty times) to the state's Attorney General for some rather speedy and sweeping show trials in Albuquerque, ideally no later than close of business Friday.

When the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico will commence an investigation into the issuance of dodgy search warrants by judicial jackholes in and around Luna County has not been addressed, even by reporters who should know better. C'mon, counselor, this is an easy ticket to Congress or the governorship, and looks to be as hard as shooting fish in a barrel. Jump right in.

No points for guessing the winners of the 2013 Jackbooted Thugs Of The Year Award, by miles.

Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

And please, for the love of all that's holy, it's long past time for SCOTUS to revisit the Fourth and Fifth Amendments relating to automobile and personal searches during traffic stops, and the admissibility of using drug dog "testimony" as probably cause for doing anything but handing out Milkbones. I pray that counsel for plaintiff uses some of the undoubted civil damages in this case to seek redress at the highest level for what has become a long train of abuses and usurpations of the Constitution, evincing a design to reduce us all under absolute despotism. Jefferson had a solution for that. What say let's nip things before we go there?

Horrible Bosses

Why, specifically with nursing, do the most unprofessional, disorganized, dysfunctional, mildly retarded, socially inept @$$holes unfailingly become middle management? Is this Affirmative Action for jackasses, or are they hiring the handicapped because they're fun to watch, or is it just that senior management can't, in my father's memorable turn of phrase, actually and reliably "tell $#!^ from Shine-ola"? I confess to feeling uncharacteristically baffled.

Do an experiment: think of the co-workers you'd least like to work with, and the ones you'd be most inclined to fire for their shenanigans if you were King or Queen For A Day, (or for students, the ones you consider deadweight on clinical and lunchmeat during lectures), and for any position you stay in more than 5 years, keep track of how many of them become charge nurses, nurse managers, and clinical coordinators.

If you find someone who's so gratingly annoying the whole department wants to smother them with a pillow, congratulations, you've just met your future supervisor. If they want to fill the pillowcase full of IV pumps and beat them with it, you may have identified a future CNO.

I bring this up because, surprising me not a whit, yet another terminal management failure has been inflicted upon my work unit. She's a legend in her own mind, and clearly, at some point, she was allegedly a decent nurse.The problem comes in that when handed any slight amount of authority, she defaults to Genghis Khan-like management techniques, that probably didn't even work for Genghis, back in the day.

Which leads not only experienced me, but utter newbies on the staff to recognize in 0.02 seconds, that she's scared spitless because she's too insecure to shut her piehole and work with people, actually listening to them and MANAGING them, because she clearly lacks the wisdom, experience, competence, self-confidence, or basic 3rd-grade-level human coping skills to not dictatorially try to micromanage everyone like they were Barbie dolls at her tea party 24/7/365.

That style didn't even cut it in the Marine Corps among fresh recruits with room temp IQs, so it sure as hell isn't going to cut it with trained degreed professionals and experienced support staff.

I mention it because it's a wee bit off-putting.

And a corollary, which I'm sure shows up somewhere on a managerial training curriculum is that when you hire and promote the least competent people, it not only destroys morale and lowers productivity, it also demonstrates to everyone down to the janitorial level that you have your own head so far up your @$$ that you can't tell the difference between someone who's good and someone who sucks, and that you're - theoretically, at least - the very supergeniuses who sign the checks and direct the affairs of the entire facility. Which scares the hell out of we, the employed.

So somewhere in the Rules For Big Wheels, there has to be written the caveats:
1) Don't pull your pants down in front of the entire staff every day by hiring management morons
2) Try and demonstrate some basic level of bare competence unless you like the sound of laughter behind your back pretty much in perpetuity.

At this point, I've seen upwards of a dozen various management folks come through, and go out the other door. I could count the keepers on my thumbs. (And one of those two handed the promotion back to them after a year to go back to bedside care, because it was corroding his mind and destroying his soul, not to mention starting to hurt his marriage because of how it was affecting him.)

And as these personnel decisions are invariably made by the same people who make clinical decisions for the hospital, one is left to wonder how, other than bare good fortune, we don't kill people like the Black Plague going through Europe in the Middle Ages.

There Are No Stupid Questions, Only Stupid People

From time to time, just to do an internet pulse check, I tab through my own stats to see what's bringing people here.

Sometimes it's surprising, or a I find a new blog, or I see someone has thoughtfully given me a shout out and there's a spike in page views.

And then there's today's little moment of mirth for moi.

Because one of the categories I find the most interesting is to see what keywords and searches dumped people on my little island in the Matrix.

One of this week's snort-worthy queries to the gods of Google and Bing was:
"how can you fight your ncclex score".

So if you end up here in general, or at this post because I put NCLEX in it, allow me to give you a leg up on this difficult and pressing question, especially for would-be nurses.

Here is the seldom-revealed-in-such-clarity, Top Secret:Codeword Access Sooper-Dooper Guaranteed Method to crack this deal wide open, and solve your NCLEX problem.

DON'T BE A DUMBASS. Study. Learn. Succeed.

I'm pretty sure I covered both study and test-taking strategies for your boards in the middle of 3 essays towards the new grads, a few weeks back.

So, sportsfans, in case you figure your state nursing board is going to jump back once you sic your lawyer, J. Noble Daggett on them, and cough up a passing board score because the sun was in your eyes that day, allow me to offer you a great deal on a barely used bridge right next to some beachfront property in New Mexico. Just send me your credit card number, bank account information, social security number and your ATM PIN, and I'll get right back to you.

(If that sarcasm went over your head, go back to beautician school, or perhaps consider a career in either food service or janitorial endeavors.)

You aren't going to "fight" your NCLEX score, as a rule. And in case no one ever let you in on this tip, let me let the cat out of the bag:

Your patients don't come with four handy multiple choice options tattooed on their chests.
That means you have to use Mr. Brain to come up with actual thoughts, and then behave appropriately and arrive at a rational course of action, based on what you see.

Y'know, pretty much how 99.9998% of the rest of life works.

So if you've somehow arrived at your nursing boards, and bungled them, either regroup and do better, or go home. But abandon any thought of arguing your way to a passing score if you didn't earn one. If you flunked your boards, let me be the first one to encourage you to try again. And if that amount of integrity and honesty with yourself eludes you, let me be the first one to say I'm really glad you're not a nurse, and I hope you never get to be one without undergoing a successful brain and character double transplant, if a donor match becomes available.

Because if test-taking kicks your ass, in a situation where you have oodles of time to successfully pick one of four letters on a keyboard, in an ideal test environment, the last place I want you to be placed is at a patient's bedside when some serious crap is going down. Try to remember that your kindergarten teacher lied to you, you aren't the most special snowflake, and if you can't hack the easy stuff to get this gig, you sure as shooting aren't going to be able to handle the life-and-death stuff day in and day out for twenty to forty years.

So please, either perform a Valsalva Maneuver (look it up!) until you hear a loud popping sound, and your head breaks suction from where you had it stuck, or pursue another career endeavor.

But thank you, whoever you are, for providing me the chance to mock your anonymous and unintended flash of honesty, once I found your jam-smeared fingerprints all over the NCLEX cookie jar. But please, pull your pants up from around your ankles, and decide if you're serious about this profession, or just comedy relief.

The Legendary Mr. Shipley

In my tenure at Seventh Circle Of Hell Hospital, it was observed on more than one occasion that we didn't see 3000 patients a week; actually, we saw 150 patients 20 times apiece. Which came far closer to the truth than anyone wanted to admit.

But King of the Cockroaches (as many refer to the patients who refuse to die, despite massive doses of radiation) was everyone's favorite, Mr. Shipley. And when I say everyone, I mean, everyone within 100 miles.

No mere gainsaying and hyperbole this, because on countless occasions, I personally witnessed paramedics from 3 cities away, who hadn't worked our area in years, or even decades, observe no more of him than Mr. Shipley's Santa-white mane of hair poking out from under an ambulance blanket as he lay waiting in the hallway for a room, who then kicked the gurney as they went past, and greeted him by name. And they all knew to take his cane away from him, because when sober he was the nicest guy you'd ever meet, but when he was drunk (about 90% of every waking moment) he was a mean mofo of a drunkaholic to deal with, not above whacking you with his county-supplied walking stick.

His modus operandi was stupid simple. He would get drunk, on whatever. He would fall down. His drinking buddies on Waste Of Skin Row would call 9-1-1, and report he was having a seizure. He would be picked up by paramedics. He would be brought to the hospital. He would receive multi-thousand dollars' worth of full-court work up, including head CT, all while roundly m*****f****** everyone around. He would sober up somewhat, along a blood alcohol continuum from 700 to the low 200s. He would be admitted. He would elope. Then he would get drunk, on whatever, and begin the cycle anew.

One July, a new resident guilty of nothing but unsupervised greenness, ill-advisedly called medical records, and requested Mr. Shipley's medical file. About 15 minutes later, two file clerks rolled up with two mini-shopping carts, and dumped the equivalent of four Manhattan telephone directories on the resident's desk. It was seriously a stack 3-4 feet tall.

"That's everything for this year, doc. If you want anything more, I'm going to have to call in some help to haul it all upstairs."

Conservative guesstimates put Shipley's recidivism in the ER at upwards of 250 visits/year. One week, I worked 5 12-hour shifts, but he beat me, arriving there 6 times. I discharged him one early morning and he was back in the ER before I was, on the same day. Assuming a generously low rate of $2K/visit, you figure it out.

Even at Califrutopian real estate prices, it would have been cheaper for the County to buy Shipley a modest house, and have enough left over to employ both round-the-clock bartenders, and nurses, plus all the distilled consumables he required, with change back from what his medical care was costing annually(and been able to resell the house, someday). And Shipley was merely one of hundreds in our little slice of paradise by the Pacific.

I only half-mockingly proposed that instead of my third shift every week, they instead purchase a 40-pass. party bus, a paper shredder, and a couple of cases of 40 ouncers and other stuff. I outlined that I'd drive around downtown picking up our favorite derelicts, get them on the bus with free beer and booze, and deliver them, suitably lubricated, to a different city west of the Rockies every week. After helpfully shredding all their personal IDs and paperwork. Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, whatever.

There was some slight risk that those cities' constables might have figured out what was going on, when 40 bums they'd previously not seen arrived, all claiming to be from the greater SoCal area, and all without a shred of documentation in proof thereof. But such was a minor irritation, because
1) They might send the bums back to us, but we'd still have gained a few days respite from their predations on our medical resources.
2) They might retaliate by sending us their bums, but at least we'd get new faces, and perhaps set up a Bum Exchange Program among the various metropolii, which might also broaden the horizons of the bums in question, and give everyone new folks to play with.
3) Most likely, once they realized they weren't in Kansas anymore (or rather, were in Kansas, but wanted to be in L.A.) the bums would avoid the cops, and set out to return homeward. And pass a liquor store on the way. And that, quite simply, would be the end of that Grand Scheme.

I could never get the Head Wheels to go for my plan, but they were suitably impressed that I'd thought it through so thoroughly.

Leaving us, day in and day out, stuck in the clutches of the federal EMTALA act, mandating that we have to lather, rinse, and repeat, for everyone, despite the futility and wastefulness of the effort. Next time your grandmother has to wait in the waiting room, or her ambulance gets diverted three hospitals away for her heart attack, be sure afterwards to take pen in hand, and thank your congressman. And please remember, you're picking up the check.

Who's Taking Care Of This Patient?

Shocking as it may seem, I didn't become a smartass after years of practice in Emergency departments.

I think it happened when my DNA formed me in the womb.

And I'm absolutely certain the hard outer shell formed on Year One Day One of nursing school clinicals.

Flashback with me to 6:54AM, standing inside the patient room of My Very First Patient in Teeny Weeny General Hospital.

Scene: Me, and an empty patient bed, looking recently occupied.

Cue Doctor Godonearth, suffering from male pattern baldness, and a planetary rotation problem that has led him to incorrectly discern the center of the universe to be somewhere between his rectum and his bellybutton.

"Where's Mrs. Calabash??"

"I give up, where?" (And hey, thanks Sgt. Pinkney, wherever you are, for the best all-purpose answer to stupid questions by officious bastards I've ever heard or given, lifetime.)

> noticeably less pleasant, which is saying something < "She's supposed to be on her oxygen!!!"

"Okay, I believe you. What's your point?"
(Even as a fresh-faced larval nurse, I never acquired an ability to tolerate rude obnoxious jackassery, from any civilian, or anyone in the military whose first name wasn't "General". And this guy strikes me as the civvy version of "Captain", tops.)

> now with small wisps of smoke beginning to emanate from ears < "That oxygen isn't PRN, she's supposed to be on it all the time!!"

"Doc, I said I believe you. So what do you want me to do about that?"

"You didn't take her off her 02? And you don't know where she is?"

"Doc, I haven't even seen her. I'm 5 minutes early for my shift, my very first shift, as a nursing student." (Evidently the powder blue dork-ass lunch-lady smock with bilateral giant red medallions of the nursing school in question, worn by no other members of actual staff in recorded history, didn't immediately register with Doctor Godonearth.)

> Now both livid and intolerably obnoxious < "You're not her nurse?? Who's taking care of this patient?!?"

"I give up, who?"
"And by the way, Doc, in here, you're an attending physician, and I'm not even on the medical totem pole heirarchy yet, but out in the parking lot, I've got you by 10 years and 30 pounds, so if I were in your shoes now, I'd seriously consider lowering my voice, and trying a form of address that's not going to involve one of us spending some quality time with a dentist, if you know what I mean..."

> Exit Doctor, in a steaming rage, leaving skidmarks... <

Whereupon after serial histrionic exchanges reminiscent of a headless chicken, with the clerks, support staff, and other nurses, he determined that a registry LVN had assisted the patient to the bathroom, and, her 02 tubing being too short, the patient had removed it in order to use the toilet rather than crapping herself in the bed.

Which was the cue for Doctor Godonearth to begin loudly and unceasingly berating a middle-aged woman in front of the main nursing station on an inpatient med-surg ward at 7AM at a volume normally reserved for marching troops on a parade field.

And one by one, nurses started popping their heads out, and moving to the sound of the fury until at length, Doctor was facing about 27 women, all standing solidly grouped around and behind the LVN he was focused on belittling so egregiously in public.

Until finally, Charge Nurse Battleaxe spoke up from next to the target of the rage, and said, "Okay, you've made your point. Now how about getting your ass the hell off my unit before I have you thrown off it?"

It transpired in clinical notes after the end of my somewhat eventful first day, that the Charge Nurse had gone to the D.O.N. for the hospital, and in fact gotten Doctor Godonearth's privileges yanked at Teeny Weeny Hospital, and gotten him banished in perpetuity, for egregious public jackassery above and beyond the call.

They all allowed that no one would miss him or his bullying, but as everyone was busy getting ready for their change of shift, no one knew what exactly had set him off first thing in the morning.

Yeah, it was a mystery to me too.

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and fame
...
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name



I distinctly remember musing to myself "I think I'm going to like this."

WMD: Why Everyone's Gonna Die Pt. 2

Yesterday's scenario was (thank God) purely fictional.

And to some tiny minority of disaster planners, largely unlikely.

Then, there's everybody else who knows how it works in the real world.

So, purely for informational purposes, let's note that there are three places the FAA has made it absolutely verbotten to fly over:
The White House
The Capitol
a small playground with a rather well-known mountain right next to a famous castle and run by a large four-fingered rodent.

That would seem to indicate those are considered, upon mature reflection, high-value targets for terrorism.

As a consequence, for over a decade since 9/11, besides spending gazillions on other things, the feds have pumped wildly ridiculous sums of money for training into local cities' budgets, for responding to terrorism, and the equipment and such to deal with such a scenario's management and response.

So imagine, just for informational purposes, that very close to one of those high-value targets, a report of a huge plume of unknown chemical composition is observed spewing from the roof of a building. Some things might come to mind in a prudent response.

Such as, for example, dispatching police units to arrive post-haste and set up a cordon, well out of the zone of airborne contamination.

And having some means of knowing the wind direction and speed, before making that call.

It probably isn't a good idea to park your first-in fire response vehicles directly under the descending chemical plume, and coating those vehicles and crews with the unknown chemical in their street clothes.

It's probably even worse, when all the inhabitants of the building are running out, jumping in their cars and driving off madly in all directions, just as that first arriving unit pulls up to a stop.

Then, noting said cloud overhead, you probably wouldn't send your guys inside to "see what's going on" with no protective equipment on.

And you wouldn't want to grab the first contaminated victim, and load them straight into a paramedic ambulance, without decontaminating the patient, or suiting up the paramedics first.

And you really wouldn't want to then drive the now entirely contaminated patient, paramedic, ambulance, and driver, out of the hot zone, and off to the local emergency room.

And no one would want you to fail to inform the receiving hospital, let alone your dispatch center, God, and the world, that you had the first of any number of chemically-contaminated patients en route from an unmitigated hazmat disaster.

It would also be the height of stupidity, lacking any notice to said hospital, to bring your contaminated selves, and your contaminated patient, straight into the inside of the main ER on a busy night.

And then, you'd be really stupid to place that patient directly into a room vented to not only the rest of the huge and busy ER, but also to the main radiology department for the ER, and to all the outside waiting rooms.

And then, and only then, let the staff know that the patient was contaminated by a mystery chemical, and you did all those things above, is pretty bad too.

Because you might have killed your police officers, your fire crews, your paramedics, and contaminated God knows how many other sites when all those unrestrained contaminated victims flooded 100 other ERs anywhere within 100 miles, plus any responders if they had any number of accidents en route to home, or one of those other ERs, or their families and neighbors. And then contaminated and/or killed not only the original receiving hospital's entire staff of doctors, nurses, PAs, techs, and support staff, but also all their patients, and all the patients in the lobby, their family members accompanying them, plus the security guards, the parking attendants, the maintenance men, the cooks in the cafeteria, and so on ad infinitum, but then also repeated the scenario dozens of times over, wiping out healthcare for half a state in short order.

And of course, not acting like any of that had happened, and waiting to see if anyone drops dead, is probably not the recommended course of action a prudent hospital receiving this chain of situational incompetence would want to follow either.

Because, I think we can agree, that would be baaaaaaad. M'kay?

So, see if you can guess what unnamed fire department, unnamed police department, unnamed location, unnamed hospital, and unnamed emergency response region did when presented with this in real life, and guess exactly how many of the above Bad Ideas actually occured, spontaneously, without any effort or malicious intent to deliberately do a bad unbelievably horrible job, and potentially endangering thousands to millions of lives as cavalierly as juggling lit dynamite sticks in the control tower at LAX. 

If you guessed anything under 100% Pure Undiluted Fail, thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

Every possible commonsense best practice and meticulously-trained for, briefed-on, drilled-for, and paid for with tens hundreds of thousands millions of dollars of your taxes training on "Rules For Hazmat Incidents" procedure was omitted. We may as well just take the notebooks and throw them in the landfill, and tell everyone to run for the hills, or kiss their @$$es goodbye.

Because that's where the cream of the crop is, 10 years after 9/11.

And if they ever tell me we're getting such an incident, I'm probably clocking out and leaving on the spot, unless I see the fresh transplant scars from healthy brain donors on about 50 heads of Those In Charge of the monkeyhouse.

And these are good, professional folks at all levels, who deliver excellent care in a literal megalopolis, not the staff of Barely Adequate Hospital and Fairly Normal Emergency Services in Outer Podunkville.


Sleep tight, America.

Read This Until You Get It

I know, with the 24 hour newscycle, and the endless rotation of stories that suit the agenda of Damning The Things The Liberal Media Hates intersects so nicely with Ratings, Ratings, Ratings Until Our Heads Explode, that lately certain stories pound you on the head until you think you have to opine.

Rule One of Having An Opinion: Make sure it's an informed opinion. Take it to the library and read to it, maybe get it a cable subscription and learn a thing or two, before you turn it loose in the city unaccompanied. Sort of precisely like you'd do with those other supergeniuses of Western civilization, your teenaged offspring. Until that point, resist the urge to prematurely launch.

And I know that some people mistake having earned certain letters after their name with The Right To Think For All Those Great Unwashed Stoopid People Over There.

So whether you're a doctor, nurse, professor, butcher, baker, or candlestickmaker, I would counsel that before you let your mouth, or your fingers, run away with you, you steadfastly avoid plopping out opinions that, much like your smelly socks, ought to be kept to yourself on Some Weighty Topic. Because usually, they just stink, and you embarrass yourself.

My case in point:

"I'm a really bitchin trauma nurse who's seen too many shooting victims, and if only people had to see what I saw, they'd set the Constitution on fire and melt all the guns down for scrap, just like I want to do. But they haven't, so they're not as smart as me. You don't need any gun I don't like for anything that isn't absolutely criminal."*

When you spew that much non-sequitr magical thinking childish psychotic nonsense out in one breath, you aren't speaking as a nurse (or a doctor, professor, etc., etc.). You're speaking purely as as a fucktard jackhole, and you've just wasted the few brain cells that your body hoarded all those years to maintain a pulse and respirations, and shot them right out of your ass. In front of the entire Internet, forever.

Unless you think that once someone had seen enough diabetic patients, they should be allowed to discuss banning Twinkies and Ding dongs.
And that once someone had seen enough rape patients they should be able to demand all men surrender their penises.
Or that after seeing enough drunks, we should re-enact Prohibition, or that enough MVA patients would justify banning all cars. Because, really, who NEEDS anything faster than a skateboard, unless you're a criminal, you frightened stupid babykilling kitten-stomping loser??

That's the level of retarded jackassical thinking we train 3 year olds out of, and which we document as proof of psychosis in crazy people.

If guns bug you, there's a far simpler solution: don't buy any. By no strange coincidence, that approach is also entirely legal under the Constitution. You can even tell your friends that in the realm of being a victim, you've elected to surrender, rather than risk being able to defend yourself against someone younger, bigger, stronger, and meaner. And to make sure all your family members are equally helpless, including children and infants. So if you don't have the moral resolve to announce what a cowardly jackass you are, don't try to ascend the mountain of your own imaginary moral superiority, and tell everyone else to follow your example, or worse, declare fiat ex cathedra that you'll just do all their thinking for them, based on your superior global omniscience.

"Medical misadventure" and pharmaceutical mistakes by doctors and nurses kill 10 times more people annually than all 300,000,000 guns in this country, going back to probably Jamestown Colony. Shouldn't we ban doctors and nurses then, because really, who needs a doctor more than once a year? And why should doctors be allowed to see more than 15 patients a week? Only a criminal would want to give them access to more victims.
I'm sorry you were sick the day they covered logic in school every year from about 10th grade to your Ph.D., but it doesn't work like that.

And such monumental jackassery is exactly the reason the Founding Fathers of this republic made sure that the closest you came to directly voting for anyone was to elect a bare 1 congressperson, thus ensuring that at any one given time, almost 49% of the brilliant "people" would be soundly ignored in each district, and up to 49% of the congress would be ignored in the capitol, on every issue, on every vote, forever. And they saw this limit on your would-be dictatorship as a feature, not a bug.

So next time you get a great idea, and you want to hear it echo because of its pure brilliance, go to the local big box hardware store, buy a galvanized bucket, put it over your head, then launch into your tirade, and drown out the sound of the rest of us with the cacophony of your own awesomeness.

Both you and we will be properly ecstatic at the results that step will guarantee on future results.





*Lovingly edited and paraphrased so that you'll never find out the actual identity of the intarwebxz Soopergeneyus who plopped that nugget out, while carefully paraphrasing every thought so that you, gentle reader, got the full impact of the author's self-evident rhetorical brilliance.