The Things They Forget to Tell Me

[Kitiger, RN]

When working CVL Recovery, I would ask the patient to list all of his medications. I would then ask some follow-up questions. as in:

1. Do you use nitroglycerine? (Yes, but only if I need it)

2. Do you take aspirin every day? (Yes; my doctor told me to take one aspirin every morning.)

3. Do you use any skin patches? (Yes; I have one on my right shoulder.)

4. Do you take any medications that your doctor didn't order, but that help you? (Glucosamine, etc)

5. How about herbal teas . . .

You have to know the right questions to ask.

What Things have they forgotten to tell you?

[brownbook]

This may be an urban legand but a nurse told me a patient was asked, on a routine visit H & P, if he had any problems with his heart, he said no. Turns out he had had a heart transplant, to his way of thinking the correct answer was no, since the transplant, several years ago, his heart was fine!

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

This is not an urban legend. I saw it a few times with patients with older renal transplants.

In my current patient population, I'd learned not to ask at all the standard "do you have problems with X, Y, Z" questions. Working either with medicines ("I see you take metformin, what's it is for?") or with separate conditions ("do you have anxiety? insomnia? panic attacks? depression? anything else along this line?") does the job much better, even if it takes longer. Even with that, it is common to find out things like "I have no diabetes but I got sugar" and "I have no problems with my heart since I got bypass last year" (which bypass turned put to be quadruple with two valves repair).

The folks I love most are those who were put on NPO from midnight for procedure of some sort and at 9 am swear they had nothing, nothing at all... except two or three supersized meals from McDonald's brought by loving families. They figured that "NPO" was only about hospital food, or so they said.

[Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN]

Yes, I hear a lot of "no, I don't have HTN because I take pills for my BP and my BP is fine." Right.

[Julius Seizure]

"He takes no daily medicines at home"

(A few hours later)

"Is the doctor going to order Prevacid for him? He usually has that every day at home.

(A few hours after that)

Did he get his Flovent this morning? He needs that every morning at home.