Funny charting error.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The hour before we meet our assigned patients in the hospital, we have to go through their charts on the computer and find out all of their important information: diagnosis, labs, progress notes, medication, etc. You know the drill.

So, the other morning I was assigned a middle-aged lady with had just had abdominal surgery. As I was looking through her admitting information from the OR, I had to look twice when I saw her weight: 799 pounds. 363 kg. BMI 128.

I called my instructor over to my computer and I was like, "Is that right? Nearly 800 pounds? That can't be right, can it? Am I reading something wrong?"

Mrs. C. looked shocked and said, "Ummm...I don't know. You would have thought they would have mentioned that to me before I assigned any of my students to this patient. Let me see that. Huh. It says 799 pounds, all right."

Now, I know the majority of Americans are overweight, obese even, but I've never ever met someone that heavy before. My instructor had never taken care of anyone like that before either. She and I looked at each other, and then we practically both ran down the hall so we could peak into my patient's room. Being that it was 6 AM, she was still sleeping soundly so she didn't hear us shove the door open a crack to pop our heads inside.

And there she was. A thin, medium built woman, who didn't even take up half of the bed. I almost burst out laughing. Yeah. There was no way on earth she was even CLOSE to weighing that much! Mrs. C. told me one of my number one goals for the morning was to get a proper weight on her and to document it in the computer. So I did.

141 sounds a lot better than 800.