Archive for August, 2009
Posted by realityrounds on August 28, 2009
Hi. I'm Nurse RR. How May I Hurt You?
This is RIBA. She/He is a Japanese nurse/robot/teddy bear (so cute!), who was invented to help ease the nursing shortage in Japan. RIBA, which stands for “Robot for Interactive Body Assistance”, can help nurses by lifting patients up to 135 pounds, out of their beds, off toilets and into wheelchairs, etc.
My guess is that nurses in the great United States don’t worry too much about moving patients who only weigh 135 pounds. Don’t think RIBA would be hired here in America. I know what you’re thinking. Nurse RR is a robot-hater. Nurse RR needs some cultural sensitivity training. Nurse RR needs to stop wathcing the Terminator. Yeah, whatever.
How would you like that thing coming at you in the dark at 2am to lift you off a toilet? ……shudder…..I mean really, think about it. It is a GIANT robot nurse teddy bear, with arms that look like semi-automatic weapons and a weird bear smile that says “do as I say earthling.” The bear/nurse/robot has an abnormally large chest wall and “dead-behind- the-eyes” gaze. The ears are kinda cute though. But still! This is creepy. The robot/nurse/bear thing has it’s joints adhered together with painter’s tape. That aint right.
I am going on the record to say I hate this robot/bear/nurse thingy. It is creepy, and I will refuse to interview it for a job. I don’t care if it is a member of the union or not. Go away now.
RR
Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 27, 2009
The following was sent to me on Facebook:
Tell ACOG your birth story!
ACOG has a new database to collect anonymous data on “unsuccessful home births.” Let’s derail their plans and flood the database with entries on SUCCESSFUL home births!
It will take less than five minutes, but having even 25 people do it will send a loud and clear message and may force them to take it down due to data they weren’t expecting. At the very least we can force it into the members-only area.
Go to http://www.acog.org/survey/hdComplications.cfm
Below is information about how to fill out the categories—you have to check each one except for the very last or the form won’t go through. Please base the information on your most recent home birth (although you will be limited to checking June, July or August of 2009 for the birth date because of how the database is set up).
State
Choose a month (June, July or August) for your baby’s delivery and 2009 for the year
Gravida (# of times you’ve been pregnant)
Para (# babies you’ve had who were born after 20 weeks)
Maternal Age
Gestational Age (number of weeks pregnant you were when your baby was born)
Problem – Please check OTHER and type in: Healthy baby born at HOME!
Go get em ladies!
RR
Posted in child birth, health, infant health, nursing, women's health | Tagged: ACOG, childbirth, homebirth, nursing | 11 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 27, 2009
Am I a soldier or a civilian I do not know. I have always known that the NICU is a terrifying, mind-numbing place of noise, and stress, and death. This coming from me, a seasoned nurse. But to a parent who is sitting at the bedside of their baby, their love, the NICU is a war zone. It is a fight. It is a fight to keep their baby alive. A fight to have a say on how their child is cared for. It is a war of ups and downs and highs and lows. It is a fight of fear versus hope. It is a fight to keep your mind from wandering and drifting off into insanity from the stress.
I know having a baby in the NICU is stressful for parents. I have seen marriages crumble, families face bankruptcy, and parents become physically ill from the stress of the situation. I know these things on an intellectual level, but I have avoided thinking about the emotional aspects of parent’s surviving a NICU experience.
Think about it. There is great hope for the baby to survive. One day the baby is doing great. “What a champ.” -says the primary care nurse. The next day, the baby is being rushed to surgery for necrotizing enterocolitis, a condition unique to preemies, where their intestines essentially start to die. One minute you feel safe and confident, the next you are planning a funeral. But your baby survives. You sit at the bedside and watch as painful after painful procedure is performed on you child. (I can not see my kids get a simple immunization. Imagine a lumbar puncture). You watch and listen as other parents babies suffer and face medical emergencies day in and day out. Is my baby next? You can not sleep, waiting for the middle of the night phone call telling you to come to the hospital. Even when your baby is doing well, you worry. Will this last?
The NICU is a war zone. Studies have shown parent’s who have survived the experience to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I can see why. Those of us who work in the NICU tend to focus all of our time and energy on saving the baby’s life. That is our main focus. The parent’s can be a casuality to that. The last thing we would want to do is send home a fragile newborn to a fragile parent. Work needs to be done.
RR
Posted in NICU, health, infant health, love, medicine, moms, nursing | Tagged: health, NICU nursing, parents | 13 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 26, 2009
I often read a blog called Florence Dot Com that covers safety issues in health care. The author is a nurse, a very smart nurse with a lot of letters after her name, Barbara Olson, RN, MS, FISMP. She tackles things like medication errors, process issues, and how to prevent health care workers from killing people. I have been mired in the muck that is the Michael Jackson case, talking about the egregiousness of how his doctor put ethics on a shelf for a paycheck. I went over to Flo’s site and was pleasantly surprised to read a birth story. Yeah! (It was written just for me I know).
Back in the day Barbara was an L&D nurse, and she saw first hand the medical interventions that led to surgical births: “In 1988, the Cesarean Section rate in metro Atlanta hovered around 35%. I was an intrapartum nurse, who had dutifully pushed more than my fair share of laboring patients to the OR due to presumed fetal jeopardy, only to watch–delighted and perplexed–when the vast majority of infants came out screaming: pink, flexed, and oxygenated. I was certain there were better ways to have a baby.”
And, she found a better way. I will not give out the details of her birth, please go to her site and read them for yourself. But, one aspect really got me thinking (and I hate to think). The staff and midwife were getting frustrated because Barbara was stuck in a very long pushing phase. Nothing was working to get the baby out:
“Why won’t you push your baby out?”
There was a very long pause. “Oh, Margaret,” I said, “I’m really afraid to be a mother.” And I cried.
WOW. There are some very emotional and personal issues involved in having a baby. Let’s never forget the woman in labor and only focus on the baby. Click here for the finale of this birth story. Please leave comments on this wonderful woman’s site!
Happy Wednesday (hump day)
RR
Posted in child birth, health | Tagged: birth story, florence.com | 4 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 25, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: grand rounds | Comments Off
Posted by realityrounds on August 24, 2009
The results of Michael Jackson’s autopsy have come back, and the results show he was given a fatal overdose of the anesthetic propofal (LA Times) Michael Jackson had a cocktail of drugs administered to him via intravenous injection in his private home. Given to him by a doctor. A doctor who should of, and probably did know better. Propofal is given to patients when they go in for surgery, or for procedures performed in the ICU. It is given in a hospital, with constant monitoring, and with staff who are skilled in immediate intubation. Patients given this medication need an IV line started, and need to be on continuous cardiac and respiratory monitoring. According to reports, MJ’s doctor gave him various drugs to help the entertainer sleep. Nothing worked. Michael Jackson’s personal physician stated he only gave him propofal because the singer insisted upon it. Dr. Conrad Murray was paid an astonishing $150,000 per month to take care of one patient, Michael Jackson.
Some would argue that it was all MJ’s and his friends and family’s fault that he died from this drug overdose. They knew he had an addiction problem, yet they enabled him and they remained quiet about it. He DEMANDED the drug. What choice did his physician making $150,000 a month to care for him have? He had the choice to adhere to the Hippocratic oath to ,”first do no harm.” The paycheck took precedent over the patient.
I understand that the draw of money can be a powerful motivator. I once took care of a baby of a very wealthy family, many moons ago. The baby was very stable, and only needed a small amount of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, care. The mother was recruiting the NICU nurses to leave their jobs and work for her as a personal nanny. She was offering a salary of $75,000 per year to care for one newborn. Back then, that was a lot of money for a nurse, and it was almost $30,000 a year more than I was currently making as a night shift nurse in a very stressful Level III NICU. I thought about the job offer, but one irritating thought kept getting in the way…..Integrity. I did not go through all those years of education and all those years of NICU training to become some rich lady’s nanny. No way. I could use my skills and experience in so many better ways.
Health care professionals have to know when to say “no” to a patient. Patient’s can not “demand” that we perform dangerous, or not the standard of care procedures on them. We are not obligated to medically treat a patient based on their whims or quirks, or addictions. We must adhere to the “first do no harm” philosophy of health care. We must not let the paycheck take precedent over the patient.
Click here for other health care professionals opinions on this matter, Whitecoat, Nurse K, Happy Hospitalist, ERP
RR
Posted in celebrity, law, nursing | Tagged: autopsy, conrad murray, health, homicide, michael jackson, off lavel drug use, propofal | 21 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 23, 2009
Come, gentle night, – come, loving black brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of Heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare
She sits quietly at his bedside. White coats breeze in and out, never acknowledging her presence. She sits in silence. Nurses rush in and out, always busy, hands in constant motion. Jaded words are spoken. Another pregnant teenager, sitting at the bedside of her brain dead boyfriend. Wrong place, wrong time, probably deserved. His choice. A bullet with his name on it, destined to shatter his skull and end his life. But today, he is alive, and she is silent at his side. Holding his hand, whispering in his ear. The constant motion and activity and harshness of the day slowly fades into night.
It is at night that the world sleeps and heals. The quiet of the darkness awakens the quiet of the mind. She confides to the nurse willing to listen. It is a gift. She speaks of a life of isolation and pain, and loneliness. She has been alone for so long. He saved her. Saved her from drugs and gangs and death. Together they survived. They made a life together, and together they made a life. It is the one true love of her life. Understanding, Undeniable and Unconditional. She will lose him, she knows. But not tonight.
RR
Posted in health, love, nursing | Tagged: death, health, love, night shift, nurses, violence | 3 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 22, 2009
Hat tip to Duncan Cross for alerting me to the perfection that is John Stewart. Bow down, ya’ll.
RR
Posted in healthcare reform | 3 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 21, 2009
A nursing woman was told to cover up or stop feeding her child in an Indiana Olive Garden restaurant. The restaurant manager stated that many customers complained about the exposure of this mom while feeding her 11 month old baby.
Indiana state law allows a woman to nurse her child anywhere, anytime. Why is this even an issue?
RR
Posted in breastfeeding, infant health | Tagged: breastfeeding in public, health, olive garden, women's rights | 13 Comments »
Posted by realityrounds on August 20, 2009
- 130 million women have been subjected to genital cutting.
- 1% of the world’s landowners are women.
- 5 thousand women a year are murdered in honor killings.
- 107 million women in the world are missing, vanished.
- Girls aged 1 to 5 are 50% more likely to die than their male counterparts in India.
- One woman dies in childbirth every minute across the globe.
- One in seven women will die in childbirth in Niger, Africa.
- 27% of women surveyed in Ghana stated their first sexual experience was through rape.
- 18% of women in Afghanistan can read and write.
- Education of women is considered illegal in parts of the world.
- Millions of women and girls throughout the world as enslaved as domestic servants and prostitutes.
“Women hold up half the sky.” This is an old Chinese saying. Women may hold up half the sky, but the earth is crushing us. How can this be? Why is it allowed to happen?
We can act, and things can change. The New York Times has a series of articles on how we can help to empower and educate the world’s women. “How changing the lives of women and girls in the developing word can change everything.”
We can Act. We can Change. We can make a difference.
RR
Posted in health, women's health | Tagged: education, feminism, health, maternal mortality, new york times, poverty, rape, third world countries | 5 Comments »
