Staff quote of the week

“I don’t know if it is an ethical conflict to go to a patient’s funeral. To be honest, all I really remember from the ethics manual is “don’t have sex with patients”—not like you’d want to with our patient population!”

Vacation woes

Dr. Warmnfuzzy went on vacation recently. As is our policy when a doc is on vacation, all requests for medication refills on her patients were referred to Dr. Analytic. And as is his policy, he filled the prescriptions with only enough pills to get the person through until their next visit with Dr. Warmnfuzzy.

Which meant that I got to field the following phone call:

Mrs. Worried: "Hi, I'm a patient of Dr. Warmnfuzzy and I picked up my prescription of Xanax and realized that it was only filled for ten days and I wondered what's going on. I mean, I've never had my medications get eaten by the dog or blown away in a hurricane or something weird happen to them for early refills--does this mean Dr. Warmnfuzzy doesn't trust me anymore?!"

After the myriad daily phone calls from assorted drug seekers, it was very nice to have a call from someone who was less concerned about the quantity of Xanax they'd been prescribed than why they'd been prescribed that amount of Xanax.

A drug is a drug is a drug?

Mr. Methhead is one of our long-term patients. He's been with RCMH for ages. While our chart numbering system is currently at six digits and growing, his medical ID number only has four! Due to his bad decisions on how to finance his drug habit, he takes a break from us regularly to spend quality time with the nice folks at the Random County jail, but he always comes back.

He's out again, and that means he's on my list of clients who come in for regularly scheduled injections of long-acting antipsychotic medication. As I gave him his injection last week, he said "Wow, I got such a rush from that!"
At a loss for words, I just stared at him before finally stammering out "You know, Mr. Methhead, that may be the nicest thing anyone's ever had to say about Prolixin!"

Probably not in my job description

Even though I work as a psychiatric nurse, I do a lot of other things in the course of the average day at work.
Like passing out condoms.
I'm a firm believer in preventative medicine. It's a lot easier to prevent contagious diseases than it is to deal with the consequences once they've taken root in a population. Since most of my patients aren't in the most stable of circumstances to begin with, the last thing they need is a serious infection or an unexpected family member.
As part of this philosophy, I pass out lots of condoms to the therapists, crisis team, caseworkers, etc. I'm much more tactful about this now than I was when I first embarked on this project.
"Sheryl, would you like some condoms to give your patients who may not be making the best lifestyle choices?" is a much better way to initiate the safer sex conversation with a co-worker than:
"Hey Sheryl, want some condoms?"

Overheard at staff meeting

Therapist: "I think Patient Steve is getting a lot better: He was telling me about his kids' mother 'and she told me, 'Steve, which do you love more--the booze or me?' and I told her it was her, but it seems I was wrong.' "

Staff quote of the week

From a buxom female co-worker: “I don’t know what it is that makes men so obsessed with boobs. It’s not like they do anything--they're just there. I even tried to ask a lesbian friend what was so important about them and she just looked at me and said 'I’m not talking about this with you.' ”

Overheard at staff meeting

Crisis worker: "How old are you--I'm pretty sure I've been sober longer than you've been alive!"