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Have you ever seen anything so big?

James is 87, the sweetest of patients, one of nature’s gentlemen. Just the other day when I was giving James a sponge bath I stood him up next to the bed so I could wash his privates when he looked down and said, “Have you ever seen anything so big?”

I didn’t know what to tell him. All I could think of was there was this guy down in Florida one time…

But before I could say a word James shook his head and said, “My brother-in-law told me once that these have got to be the biggest damn feet he has ever seen!”

Egg on my face –>

Image: Medioimages/Photodisc | Thinkstock

It’s Murphy’s Law—“If something can go wrong, it will”—as seen by nurses.

Perhaps some of these “oh Lordy I’ve been there” scenarios will sound familiar to you:

• You can please some of the patients all of the time, and all of the patients some of the time, but you just can’t please the family.
• Management truly believes you are overpaid. But they would never work for what they pay you.
• People farthest from your work area are the least needy—and least afraid of pushing the nurse call. Invariably.
• The more minor the injury, the more angry that person is for having to wait. Meanwhile, the little old guy with crushing chest pain says, “Oh, it’s okay, I’ve waited this long already….”
• Your patient is finally absorbing his NG feed after days of aspirating—but he pulls the tube out just before the consultant does his ward round.
• The number of staff to be found on the ward is inversely proportional to the scale of the emergency.
• You’ve just given a patient a meal—pie, roast potatoes and a sponge pudding with custard—when the consultant says the patient is ready for the operation.
• A very healthy patient, when admitted to a very small room, will require a vent, a cooling blanket, hemofilter, six pumps and a digital television before the end of your shift, requiring you to climb over the bed to get out of the room.
• The hospital always sends admissions to your nursing home at change of shift on your weekend on—the physician’s weekend off.
• The lift always breaks down when the 400-pound patient needs to be transferred from one bed to another.

The doctor-nurse relationship –>