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by Angie O'Plasty, RN

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Posted: Jan 16, 2008 10:35 AM

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Warning: This is an attempt at nursing humor. Any resemblance to any situation or person, living, dead, or half-dead from lack of sleep, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved and all tongues in cheeks.

I figured something out last night. The maker of grocery carts changed jobs. You know, you grab a grocery cart, the wheels start shimmying like four strippers with thongs full of loose change? Yeah, that's the guy. Well, he went south. To Florida. To manufacture dinamaps.

Every blasted one has wheels that don't turn, cords that catch under, over, and onto anything that passes near. The machine is accompanied by a constant booooop-boooooop-boooooop sound the moment it's touched by human hands.

I believe there's a little fiend sitting inside the machine trying to make as much racket as possible, so that there is no such thing as quietly slipping into a room in the dimly lighted wee hours to take one patient's vitals without waking every patient within 50 yards. Patients hear those hard plastic wheels screee-screeee-screeee across the floor, stop, and then begin the booop-booooop-booop sound.

Ever notice that you can never silence the alarm for long enough to get a full set of vitals?

Like I said, I finally figured it out. It's all part of the focus on customer service. As in, "See how much noise we're making? It means we are not sitting at desks all night long, playing Solitaire on the computer. It means we are WORKING, working tirelessly through the night, to convince you that you are getting the best service that your health-care dollar can buy, yes we are!"

Sleep? Oh no, you don't! You are a patient here and you will notice that we are working hard to keep you alive every single minute of the day.

Studies have proven that sleep deprivation induces a hallucinatory effect.

Which is why the patient might think he dreamt that lab tech coming into his room and snapping on the brightest overhead lights, raising the bed to the highest position, slapping a tourniquet on the patient’s arm and then reassuring him, “Don’t worry, you can go right back to sleep after I’m done here.”

Yeah, right.

The patient has no clue that the evil lab tech has to pierce his skin 12 times a day for that weird neuro lab order that the nerdy genius doc playing House and trying to diagnose zebras when he's in a herd of mustangs just has to have, timed at precisely the time that the poor confused patient has finally gone to sleep. The doc doesn’t get blamed; the lab tech does.

The doc doesn’t have to pick the poor sleepless patient up off the floor after the lab tech is gone and the patient figures he might as well get up to the bathroom, since he’s awake anyway; the nurses do. The unit gets dinged for a patient fall and everyone has to suffer through endless root cause questions.

Don’t you wish the questions on the fall risk behaviors of patients were realistic? Not this namby-pamby stuff:

Q: Was the patient trying to get out of bed when he/she fell?
Yes ___ No ___

Don’t you ever feel the sudden urge to write:

A: Yes, you blooming idiots, because the lab tech had to wake the patient for the timed draw that Dr. Genius wanted at 0400. Ya think there's ANY CORRELATION to the fact that the (confused due to sleep-deprivation) patient wanted to get out of bed 15 minutes after that lab draw?????

You finish calling everyone from here to England, document in three different places, and place 2 different alarms on the poor, befuddled patient, who by now truly doesn’t know if it’s day or night.

Then it's time for more vitals.....and here comes the Kracken....er, I mean, Dinamap.

One day the man who invented this machine will get a taste of the little monster he created. It'll be coming.....coming for him.....at 0400....right behind the lab tech....

I only hope I get to be his nurse.

Jan 16, 2008 03:19 PM -

Jan 17, 2008 02:28 PM - I think you are soooooo.....soooooo.....right and I only can hope that after he leaves the hospital he will go back to the drawing board and try it again!

Jan 17, 2008 05:36 PM - Ooooooooh! One of my recurring fantasies is to haul a Dinamapp out to the alley and take an axe to it. I'm relieved to hear I'm not the only one. As John Cleese said "bring in the machines that go BING!!!!!!!". Thanks for the smiles.

Jan 18, 2008 03:39 AM - I'm so glad to hear someone elso knows about that machine. One of the funniest Monty Python sketches ever!!

Jan 18, 2008 08:50 AM - Awesome article too!

Jan 18, 2008 10:32 AM - THAT WAS GREAT AND UNFORTUNATELT SOOOOO TRUE!

Jan 29, 2008 12:52 AM - Why is this so true, our lab tech arrives any where from 0230 to 0630 depending on their staffing, the weekend or Monday, and whatever criteria they design. I can't get my tech to figure out to follow the lab tech as they migrate down the hall. no they wait till 0400am on the nose. If i am lucky i follow tthe lab and get the vitals done on those whose patience have all but been strained.

Feb 27, 2008 08:45 AM - Oh my gosh my tummy hurts either from laughing, identifying with every word or both.....I LOVED this! ? What an awesome piece.....