TiredMD

I'm trying to mislead people by telling you what I took in medical school? Amusing. Believe it or not, we do have a few prereqs we do before we go to med school. And the fact that a few courses have titles that sound similar to traditional undergradu...

Thank you. There's a definite undertone here that anyone who doesn't buy into the new-age "everybody should just hug and be happy" mindset is either trolling or some kind of hideous person. The real kicker for me in this thread was the notion that yo...

Don't do it too often, but off the top of my head: 1) Patient acutely decompensating, I asked for critical piece of equipment (pericardiocentesis needle, ET tube, etc) that is not in the room. The quality nurses and techs are busting their behinds to...

Again, let me encourage you to take this cop mentality to the hospitals, and attempt to get one of your physicians arrested for raising their voice. You'd be famous in the hospital for years to come, even if your employment was short-lived . . .

I absolutely do.

Don't worry, bronchitis isn't real anyway.

Never even opened the stupid thing. When I need administration information, I use Davis' Drug Guide for Nurses. When I need info on adverse effects, dosing, and interactions, I prefer to use sources not published by the manufacturer. I really don't t...

How can you tell the difference when everyone wears a long white coat and no one wears a nametag? But I digress . . . Under LCME, ethics training is mandatory for medical schools. The actual form and structure of the courseis left to the discretion o...

Actually, they're not. I had one seminar on ethics, once a week for four weeks. Everyone is presumed to have learned statistics as an undergraduate, along with the other basics like biochemistry, cellular biology, and basic writing. Management isn't ...

Whoa, don't think I'm equating yelling with threatening. Threatening is clearly out of order and obviously criminal.

That's kind of interesting, and I meant to ask you about it. I would have thought it would be opposite; that men would get yelled more than women, given the sensitivity to sexual harassment lawsuits. FWIW, I work in an all-male environment, so there...

Once the OP clarified that this physician was on-call, obviously the yelling was inappropriate. Hell, the anger at being called was inappropriate. But I continue to insist that not only is yelling not a particularly big deal, but it can also be incre...

I love it!

Not too sure why so many of these narcs are available as stand-alone products. There is that "synergy" theory that NSAIDs/tylenol in combination with narcs complement each other to provide superior pain relief. And certainly, other than the overdose ...

I'm with you 100%. In fact, I'll go a step further and say that many, if not most, chronic back pain patients should see Pain before they get sent to a surgeon. We are doing so many questionable lumbar lamis and decompressions, and so many recent pa...

Sorry, next time I'll lie so that you feel better. Ultram is a wonderful drug! It works just like narcotics and I fully expect it to work every time I give it!! The mechanism of action is identical to morphine but you won't get addicted to it!

Some day I'll understand why my colleagues write for these idiotic Tylenol + Vicodin orders. A tab of Vicodin has 500mg acetaminophen, which is the same as an extra-strength Tylenol. You give 2 tabs of Vicodin and you just gave a gram of tylenol. So ...

If you really believe this, I encourage you to call the police the next time a physician yells at you. I imagine the laughter of the 911 operator will be the last thing you hear before you're fired.

I think you and I are reading this differently. I read it as the patient's primary care physician, who was not the admitting physician, was called at 11pm to answer a relatively insignificant question. Was he really on-call? I must have missed that p...

I've met people who swear by it, but as the above poster notes, it tends to be people who are highly medication-sensitive to begin with. For most patients, I don't find much use for the drug, and I am personally of the opinion that it is no more effe...

Yeah, it binds to mu receptors just like opiates . . . just at 1/6000th the strength. Personally, I think it's a crap drug, a throw-away to pawn off on your chronic back pain patients in the hope that the weak anti-depressant effect will improve thei...

Bingo. If this wasn't the admitting physician, there was no reason to call that late. It's just completely inappropriate. This isn't a case of a "rude doctor", it's a rude nurse. Would the OP have called a family member that late to ask the same ques...

Ultram is my placebo of choice.

- You have the right to obtain a copy of your medical record; you do not have the right to take the original, nor do you have the right to get it on the spot - Many physicians are reluctant to release your records directly to you, because patients fr...

Certain rules are somewhat set in stone. For example, a patient with a fresh arthroplasty, you don't want to place stress on the joint in such a way that it will cause a dislocation; hence no adduction past midline, flexion past 90, etc etc. But oth...