Orders from hell...

I worked with a CT surgeon who always whipped out his own nasty looking scissors to remove chest tubes. I'd always pad down the bed and the floor with chucks, and lay a sterile suture removal kit next to it. When he was ready I'd peel back the top and leave it near him … he'd always ignore it, pull out his funk covered scissors from his lab coat pocket, snip, snip - yank out the chest tube (insert patient screaming here) blood flying, and fling it to a section of floor without any chucks. Zip - he'd pull the sutures closed like purse strings (the patient still yelling in agony, trying desperately to find themselves through the haze of pain) spin on his heel and walk out - leaving me to comfort a writhing patient, and a nasty mess to clean up while cursing under my breath.

One day he left his fancy surgery telescope glasses sitting on the counter and left … I tried them on, played with them a bit, then ran a saliva covered finger down each lenses before putting them snuggly back into the padded case. Let him chew on that for a while as he obsessively polished them while wondering what happened to them.

I would have written up a 'quality variance' report (or whatever it's called in your facility) every. dang. time. for lack of pain control, and break in sterile technique! That is just plane rude. If enough people did that, eventually, it would have gotten to some higher authority, and gotten a behavior change. I probably would have TOLD him I was going to do it, too. You know better, Doc!

Man, one of the worst orders I've ever read was my very first nursing job what feels like a hundred years ago (it was 16), on a general surgery floor. Back in the Dark Ages when we gave Demerol like it was water, one doc wrote for 10mg Demerol IV q1h for a hip or knee replacement (can't remember which). Not only was it an enormous pain in the butt to run in that room every hour, 10mg of Demerol was like spitting in the wind.

Man, one of the worst orders I've ever read was my very first nursing job what feels like a hundred years ago (it was 16), on a general surgery floor. Back in the Dark Ages when we gave Demerol like it was water, one doc wrote for 10mg Demerol IV q1h for a hip or knee replacement (can't remember which). Not only was it an enormous pain in the butt to run in that room every hour, 10mg of Demerol was like spitting in the wind.

Congratulations, Dr. Elvish.

Keep in mind that most of my experience is NICU.

A frequently used IV solution is D10 ISO-P. The "P" is for, duh, pediatric. I told a med student that's what order I needed; he wrote: D10 ISOPee.

Attending asked me how baby X was eating; I said, she's trying to nipple, but not quite there yet, so, we were still gavaging most feedings. He wrote "encourage baby to p.o. feed". I read the order out loud, looked @ him, and said, Well, now! There's a novel concept! We never would have thought of that on our own!! He started laughing.