This is sick

it's just a TV SHOW. i tell people all the time it's not like what you see on TV....try being an OB nurse in the day and age of "Baby Story" and "maternity ward"

ugh....people really DO believe everything they see on TV. it's depressing and annoying both.

ummmmmmmmmmmm.it's a TV SHOW. try not to attach too much meaning to entertainment representing real life...its just tv.

yeah, I know its a TV show, but often these TV dramas get their stories from something from real life, even though they might twist it. I just wondered if this was something anyone had actually heard of.

yeah, I know its a TV show, but often these TV dramas get their stories from something from real life, even though they might twist it. I just wondered if this was something anyone had actually heard of.

changed my words, I felt i was being rude and I did NOT mean to be....sorry. i just get annoyed with TV shows misrepresenting and taking liberties with nursing and medicine and people buying into everything they see.....

sorry my ire is not with YOU, but Americans and TV.

changed my words, I felt i was being rude and I did NOT mean to be....sorry. i just get annoyed with TV shows misrepresenting and taking liberties with nursing and medicine and people buying into everything they see.....

sorry my ire is not with YOU, but Americans and TV.

No problem.

And I do have the same problem with you. People who have no clue about healthcare, medicince or nursing would watch that and think..."Wow, so thats what really goes on..hmmmm"

Stuff like this is why I'm glad I'm going into psych. I'd like to see a show about that

Again, I apologize for being so rude. I sure need to choose my words more carefully; sometimes online, things just don't come out as we mean them to. When I re-read what I wrote I realized I was being a total jerk!

Again, I apologize for being so rude. I sure need to choose my words more carefully; sometimes online, things just don't come out as we mean them to. When I re-read what I wrote I realized I was being a total jerk!

No need to apologize again...no harm no foul

I agree with fergus51. We administer potentially fatal doses every day, but not to kill someone. If they are at deaths door and in agony, we medicate the heck out of them. Sometimes the window between a fatal dose, and a merciful, pain relieving dose, is very narrow.

Right. When my grandmother was dying of metastatic pancreatic cancer, she was on a morphine drip with bolus doses if she needed them (PRN per nursing, not PCA pump). She was at max doses and still moaning in pain, especially when they handled her. So the docs sat down with my dad (POA) and said they could increase the dosage as much as needed to make her comfortable, but that the risks might include respiratory compromise. It's not like they just gave her a huge bolus - they increased the dose until she could sleep peacefully and not moan in pain when they moved her. Whether that got to her or the cancer, who knows. All we know is that she was comfortable.

I don't think that happens, or at least very rarely. We are extremely generous with morphinewhen someone terminal is in pain or SOB, and it may speed their death, but so be it. I have never seen someone screaming from terminal cancer pain, and I never want to.

There was a recent case in my small state where a physician administered a paralytic to a dying patient. Supposedly it was to make the patient look calm for the family. He barely got slapped on the wrist. That in my mind was murder, and a horrible way to die. I can't believe that after all the publicity he didn't lose his license or go to jail. MDs can do almost anything, it seems. A nurse would have been crucified for that.

I don't think that happens, or at least very rarely. We are extremely generous with morphinewhen someone terminal is in pain or SOB, and it may speed their death, but so be it. I have never seen someone screaming from terminal cancer pain, and I never want to.

There was a recent case in my small state where a physician administered a paralytic to a dying patient. Supposedly it was to make the patient look calm for the family. He barely got slapped on the wrist. That in my mind was murder, and a horrible way to die. I can't believe that after all the publicity he didn't lose his license or go to jail. MDs can do almost anything, it seems. A nurse would have been crucified for that.

that IS horrifying. Just horrendous.

I should research this case and provide details. I don't remember all of it but I know I was horrified. I'll look it up.

No doubt timed by the tv programmer to coincide with all the ruckus over Terri Schaivo...

And yes, I did read the book called "Nurse". The term was called "snowing" the patient. Her perspective may highlight the differences mentioned here between purposefully giving a person a bolus of medication, or giving them so much medication that they are no longer in pain, but where respiratory compromise could occur. What the author was describing I believe fell firmly in the later category.

Just to let you know, I am NOT in favor of "right to die" laws for a variety of reasons. One is the potential for abuse. They have asked physicians in Holland whether they have ever taken a patient's life without their permission (Holland does have "right to die" laws) and an amazing percentage had. Also, depression is a common problem with terminal illness, but also for people who are not terminal but have chronic pain, for people who are immobile, and others. Who does the diagnostics to determine whether the person requesting death is depressed, and could be treated successfully with anti-depressants--or is expressing a true "rational" (whatever that might be) desire to die.

NurseFirst

I'm watching an OLD episode of Chicago Hope on Discovery Health channel. This episode, a doctor went to court to try and have a morphine drip increased for a patient in a vegitative state up to a fatal dose.

What I found disturbing was one...at one point, the doctor ordered a nurse to adminster it, and she refused. He then proceded to scream and yell at her. Her nurse supervisor told her "Don't you see what you've done? This is done in silence all the time, but now its on the record!"

The doctors said the same thing, how euthanaisa goes on every day in the U.S. with a "wink" between Dr's and families. Has anyone ever heard of this? I'm almost halfway through an ADN program, have worked a year as a CNA and know lots of doctors and nurses and have never heard of this. I just found it highly disturbing. I don't like to see people suffer, but I also don't like to see doctors playing God either.

While changing channels on my TV this evening, I happened onto Jerry Falwell, the minister from Virginia that founded Liverty University. He was preaching on how babies, born with Downe's Syndrome and other serious conditions are placed in a private room, not fed, changed, or care for until the baby dies. While I have read and heard tales of this when I was in school, I have never been a party to this, nor have I seen this in a modern facility of today. Anyone else out there have an opinion, a story, a factual account to tell? I so not follow this particular minister and I did not listen to all he had to say, but he was presenting this as happening everyday in our hospitals by staff(nurses???) He went to far with me and I intend to write a personal letter to him to let him know this is illegal, immoral, and something I do not think a professional nurse would be a party to today. :angryfire