It's all in the presentation

We have a patient who was vomiting what looked like fecal matter. My ADON asked me to review the chart to see if they'd missed something. (We are a spectacularly great team!) I reviewed the chart and saw that he had a history of colon cancer with a resection and chemo, a possible small bowel obstruction at the hospital, and many other co-morbidities. I hunted down his doctor in the building and told him we needed to get a KUB. He agreed and we booked the test.

When I told the team nurse, she said "I told him that yesterday and he did nothing." So, I've been doing this for the better part of 32 years (yikes!). I told her it's all in the presentation. Some of these docs need to be jolted into action. I ran up to him while he was sitting at the computer and gesticulated wildly while describing the resident's symptoms and telling him we NEEDED a KUB. I told the nurse, who is wonderful but still relatively new, that she had to learn to ACT like some things were more of a problem than they actually are to get what we need for our residents. I guess all those theater classes in college paid off!