At best, it makes me sad. At worst, it promotes teeth-gnashing, violent nausea, and compels feelings of homicidal rage. What it it? The fact that 85% of my day is spent checking in non-emergent complaints. As depressing as it is, if you're a medicaid patient, I can almost guarantee that you have not come to the emergency room for an actual emergency. Why? Because your healthcare is FREE.
How wonderful that must be.
No copays for emergency care, no fees for ambulance rides, and you don't have to pay a dime for your prescriptions. Damn. What's the catch? Oh right, there IS no catch. Thanks EMTALA.
'So, what's the big deal? What do you overpaid medical jerks care if I check in myself and my five screaming, playful children into a trauma center for a cough or a runny nose?'
Glad you asked. The answers are as follows:
1) YOU'RE WASTING MY F@$KING money! I am a tax payer, and I think it would be awfully swell if my tax dollars went toward paying our teachers, cleaning up our heroin parks, or even compensating medicaid hospitals and providers adequately.
'But I can't find a medicaid doctor who will see me!
Really? You mean people as intelligent, hard-working, and indebted (to medical school) as doctors are don't want pennies on the dollar for seeing you and your entire family? Cause as it turns out, Medicaid doesn't exactly pay docs/hospitals/ERs as much as REAL insurance companies do. And using the ER for every sniffle, every rash, EVERY TIME is only exacerbating the problem. ER care costs six times what clinic/physician office care does. Beginning to understand why your "insurance" can't pay docs/hospitals/ERs properly? Can you say vicious cycle? I can. I chant it in my sleep.
2) You're making the REAL emergency patients wait unnecessarily. And if that's not enough (and it is), I am then forced to watch said real patients as they uncomfortably shift in their seats, desperate to ignore your obvious lack of illness and your gum snapping, texting, etc. It's embarrassing and if I'm being very frank, kind of immoral.
3) You're putting my hospital in "the red". Because your "insurance" reimburses so poorly, our billing department has to adjust it's fees to make up for you. How? They overbill the uninsured. So some twenty year old who has no medicaid and breaks his arm now gets to pay 4 times what he should. Doesn't sound very fair.
4)You're exasperating the medical professionals serving your community. Foot blisters after walking? A rash for a year? Menstrual cramps?! One can only maintain their morale for so long, ya know? ER team members should be like pit crews. We should experience adrenaline rushes by the mere suggestion of an emergency and the possible opportunity to save a life. ER patients should be swarmed upon entry by excited, motivated, idealistic staff members. Instead, what you will probably see is a dozen or so overworked, unimpressed, zombie-like robots with flat affects and shitty dispositions. Again, thanks EMTALA.
5) You're teaching your children to be entitled, lazy, slothful individuals with zero critical thinking skills and generalized apathy. What do you think breeding a dependent generation of troglodytes will do to this nation?
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Born of Frustration
Somehow you found me and my little blog. And you're horrified (or in complete agreement). Hate nursing? Surely the title is nothing more than a shameless marketing tactic. The author doesn’t really mean that, right? Wrong.
I hate being a nurse.
H-A-T-E it.
‘But it’s such a noble, honorable profession! Nurses make such a good living! They’re angels! What about Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul?!’
Soup won’t fix this. Forget that I hate chicken noodle soup, or even that I liked the aforementioned book just fine. The truth is… we have a problem. And it’s getting bigger by the minute. Nursing, especially emergency room nursing in my humble opinion, is a terrible job.
‘If you don’t like being a nurse than go do something else’, you say to yourself with a smug smile.
Yeah. Cause most people love what they do for a living? Come on, now. The majority of folks are dutifully punching those time cards each day because they have to, not because they want to. And besides, I’m not crazy about flushing six years of college and another seven years in practice down the toilet just because I’m unhappy.
‘Nurses are supposed to be caring. That’s their job.’
Wrong again. My job is actually far more unrealistic than that, though you bring up an interesting point; patients, hospital managers, and just about every other self-righteous person on the planet expects nurses to care. And many of them do. It’s why the majority of healthcare professionals sign up in the first place. But you don’t really think that caring is limitless or unconditional, do you?
‘Ahhh…’
Well it isn’t. You can’t pay someone to care about you. Think about it for a minute. I care about my children unconditionally. My husband, friends, coworkers, and everyone else has to earn my concern, or at least avoid destroying that which, however modest, might naturally exist. I am not an angel. I am a human being.
‘Okay, well what’s the problem?’
Grab a cup of coffee. This could take a while.
1)Conflict of Interest
There was a time in America’s not so distant past when people were nice to each other. Considerate even. They were more humble; more gracious. Kindness seemed contagious. Old movies featured scenes with loving nurses wiping the sweaty brows of their grateful patients. It was beautiful. What happened? I sure don’t know, but somehow entitlement killed humility and that is indeed a very big crime.
Entitlement now plagues every profession in this country and healthcare is certainly the worse for it. Patients demand more and give less than ever before. At the hospital where I work about fifty percent of the patients are on state medical insurance, meaning that they don’t have to pay a dime for their visits, and another twenty five percent or more are simply uninsured. What do they expect in return for free service?
-Immediate care completed at the speed of light
-Warm smiles from kind and eager healthcare team members who are clean and professionally dressed
- To be medicated, bathed, fed, toileted and the like at a moments notice
- For their seventeen family and friends to have ample room to sprawl and hover over the medical staff’s every room
- For treatment areas to be impeccably clean at just the right temperature
-Unequivocal diagnoses with one hundred percent cure rates (cures must again cost nothing and take no time or effort on their part)
- Their doctors and nurses to be just as horrified by their problems as they are
- For no one else to need the attention of “their” healthcare providers
- And of course, for their doctors and nurses to be fluent in whatever language they speak
‘Okay, so maybe a tad lofty, but I still don’t get the conflict of interest part.’
Let me explain. Patients aren’t the only subgroups who have become rather entitled. Nurses and doctors also have a few modest expectations. They would just love it if:
-Emergency departments weren’t closing nationwide, due to grossly inadequate state medical reimbursements, at the speed of light
-Patients were friendly, gracious, and had the courtesy to at least rid themselves of corrosive body odor before visiting our home away from home
- Patients would eat, take their regularly scheduled medications, and perhaps visit the john before arriving, rather than needing all of these things handled for them
- People would appreciate that we can’t exactly work around your seventeen visitors in our tiny rooms very easily
-All patients and visitors would consider that just maybe the medical staff does not also function as engineering staff, and that room temperatures are not within our control
- People would realize that we are not psychics, and that often if a cure is available, it takes discipline and a bit of cash for that cure to be effective
- Patients would consider, just for a moment, that the same medical professional who is having to nod as they hear about your terrible cold, are the same individuals who have to shock lifeless bodies and crack open chests on children
-Patients and families would take note of their surroundings, as there is a 95% chance that you are not the sickest person your healthcare team must worry about
- Patients and their family members would care enough to even try to learn the primary language of the country where the likely free service is being provided
You see, I went to school for a long time and have worked hard to be in the position that I now hold. I don’t really think I deserve to be cussed at, threatened, or assaulted by some of the horrendous smells our guests are capable of unleashing. So, if I feel entitled to my list, and you feel entitled to yours, than by golly, we have a conflict of interest.
I hate being a nurse.
H-A-T-E it.
‘But it’s such a noble, honorable profession! Nurses make such a good living! They’re angels! What about Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul?!’
Soup won’t fix this. Forget that I hate chicken noodle soup, or even that I liked the aforementioned book just fine. The truth is… we have a problem. And it’s getting bigger by the minute. Nursing, especially emergency room nursing in my humble opinion, is a terrible job.
‘If you don’t like being a nurse than go do something else’, you say to yourself with a smug smile.
Yeah. Cause most people love what they do for a living? Come on, now. The majority of folks are dutifully punching those time cards each day because they have to, not because they want to. And besides, I’m not crazy about flushing six years of college and another seven years in practice down the toilet just because I’m unhappy.
‘Nurses are supposed to be caring. That’s their job.’
Wrong again. My job is actually far more unrealistic than that, though you bring up an interesting point; patients, hospital managers, and just about every other self-righteous person on the planet expects nurses to care. And many of them do. It’s why the majority of healthcare professionals sign up in the first place. But you don’t really think that caring is limitless or unconditional, do you?
‘Ahhh…’
Well it isn’t. You can’t pay someone to care about you. Think about it for a minute. I care about my children unconditionally. My husband, friends, coworkers, and everyone else has to earn my concern, or at least avoid destroying that which, however modest, might naturally exist. I am not an angel. I am a human being.
‘Okay, well what’s the problem?’
Grab a cup of coffee. This could take a while.
1)Conflict of Interest
There was a time in America’s not so distant past when people were nice to each other. Considerate even. They were more humble; more gracious. Kindness seemed contagious. Old movies featured scenes with loving nurses wiping the sweaty brows of their grateful patients. It was beautiful. What happened? I sure don’t know, but somehow entitlement killed humility and that is indeed a very big crime.
Entitlement now plagues every profession in this country and healthcare is certainly the worse for it. Patients demand more and give less than ever before. At the hospital where I work about fifty percent of the patients are on state medical insurance, meaning that they don’t have to pay a dime for their visits, and another twenty five percent or more are simply uninsured. What do they expect in return for free service?
-Immediate care completed at the speed of light
-Warm smiles from kind and eager healthcare team members who are clean and professionally dressed
- To be medicated, bathed, fed, toileted and the like at a moments notice
- For their seventeen family and friends to have ample room to sprawl and hover over the medical staff’s every room
- For treatment areas to be impeccably clean at just the right temperature
-Unequivocal diagnoses with one hundred percent cure rates (cures must again cost nothing and take no time or effort on their part)
- Their doctors and nurses to be just as horrified by their problems as they are
- For no one else to need the attention of “their” healthcare providers
- And of course, for their doctors and nurses to be fluent in whatever language they speak
‘Okay, so maybe a tad lofty, but I still don’t get the conflict of interest part.’
Let me explain. Patients aren’t the only subgroups who have become rather entitled. Nurses and doctors also have a few modest expectations. They would just love it if:
-Emergency departments weren’t closing nationwide, due to grossly inadequate state medical reimbursements, at the speed of light
-Patients were friendly, gracious, and had the courtesy to at least rid themselves of corrosive body odor before visiting our home away from home
- Patients would eat, take their regularly scheduled medications, and perhaps visit the john before arriving, rather than needing all of these things handled for them
- People would appreciate that we can’t exactly work around your seventeen visitors in our tiny rooms very easily
-All patients and visitors would consider that just maybe the medical staff does not also function as engineering staff, and that room temperatures are not within our control
- People would realize that we are not psychics, and that often if a cure is available, it takes discipline and a bit of cash for that cure to be effective
- Patients would consider, just for a moment, that the same medical professional who is having to nod as they hear about your terrible cold, are the same individuals who have to shock lifeless bodies and crack open chests on children
-Patients and families would take note of their surroundings, as there is a 95% chance that you are not the sickest person your healthcare team must worry about
- Patients and their family members would care enough to even try to learn the primary language of the country where the likely free service is being provided
You see, I went to school for a long time and have worked hard to be in the position that I now hold. I don’t really think I deserve to be cussed at, threatened, or assaulted by some of the horrendous smells our guests are capable of unleashing. So, if I feel entitled to my list, and you feel entitled to yours, than by golly, we have a conflict of interest.
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