Life is like a box a box of chocolates… sure… we all know that from Forrest Gump. But, now, Dr. Gump weighs in on what shift work is like.

Check out GiggleMed.com’s Hello Agency Nurse – a short nursing humor book about a day in the life of an agency nurse.

Funny and embarrassing stories abound in the healthcare professions. Although most happen to us when we are interns or nursing students or new to a particular location, they can happen at any time… and always when you least expect them.

Many of you have already found the “Stories” button in the menu across the top of this blog. But for those of you who didn’t, the graphic below has a not-so-subtle black arrow pointing to the link.

Anyway, here’s a recent submission. This one comes from “MM”, a med-surg nurse… I call it “Sage Advice to the Legless”:

When I was in nursing school another nursing student and I were giving our first bedbath to a patient that was a bilateral AKA.When we had finished his bath we pulled his sheet up and asked if he’d like his blanket as well. The patient said he didn’t care if we pulled the blanket up or not. My classmate covered him with the blanket saying if you don’t want it you can kick it off.

Got a funny story of your own? Get a free gift…

Got a funny story of your own? Share it. ==> Tell me a funny story and get a free medical humor report <==

Check out the “From the Call Bell” magnet at the GiggleMed medical humor gift store.

Here’s the latest in the iHealth iPod Parody Series. The most recent iPod medical humor graphics put out there were iShock and iAGRA… now, we give you iVee…

In addition to trying to con you into buying some medical humor buttons, shirts, mugs, hats, etc with these iHealth designs, we’re also trying to build some anticipation of our release of a free iPhone/iPod app… a funny one of course.

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We’ve added a ton of iHealth eCards for you to send to new grads, dads, or, of course, if you just wanna make someone laugh. Here’s a video that explains how to get to and use the eCards. They’re completely free and they’re completely awesome. We’ve added a bunch more since this video was made, so go look for yourself.

Next week is National Nurses Week.  Now I hope you’re prepared… Many of you will see some horrendous  “gifts” given by hospitals to the nursing staff.  To preempt these Nurses Week gift atrocities, here is a list of gifts you really should never give to a nurse on Nurses Week… actually, ever:

1 – An engraved bed pan

2 – Breath mints packaged in cute little specimen cups

3 – An ink stamper that reads: “Verbal order. Repeated and read back.”

4 – A coffee mug for the nurse’s station that reads: “JCAHO Schmayko”

5 – A coupon for free biohazzard tattoos

6 – The unveiling of yet another form for nurses to fill out “to make things easier”

7 – Buttons that read: “Doctor’s Little Helper”

Post some real-life ridiculous gifts you’ve seen in the comments below.

Watch for awesome freebies coming on Monday, May 4th for you to give away to your nursing friends and colleagues… just to say thanks during Nurses Week.

It’s time for a mid-month dose of hospital chart bloopers… Here’s another set of funny medical malapropisms for you. Can you control your urine? Chart Farts® (: real stuff. real charts :)

• Psychiatric Admission Diagnosis: Screamer
• He demonstrated a 9 kilogram weight loss with corresponding diuresis
• Patient sees his urologist for prosthetic enlargement
• a trail of morphine
• Admission Diagnosis: Diagnosis needed
• LE tenderness was solicitable by palpation
• Hx of lung fibroids
• Pain under left breath
• Estimated RV pressure 335mmHg
• Angina with prior myocardial infarction s/p myocardial infarction
• Medicine consult: I will be happy to follow the patient with you on my service.
• Nutrition note: Pt eating 0-100% of renal diet.
• intermittent heart beat
• History of high cholesterol 6 months for which he takes once a day cholesterol.
• He is followed by a GERD doctor.
• This is a 54 YO white African American
• Nephrology recommended dietary restriction of urine protein and creatinine.

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The call bell rings and it takes forever for the nurse to get there. But don’t blame the nurse, blame the overseers. They’re concerned with documentation, not patient care. You don’t need to actually do any nursing with diligence and care… You just have to rush through it and then spend hours documenting that you did it. There’s no time for call bells… that is, until some disconnected committee declares that call bell to room entry times need documentation too. And that, of course, will have a form, too.

Got an idea for a caption to go beneath this image of a call bell? Let us know. If we use your nursing comic caption, we’ll send you a funny “From the Call Bell” magnet (from the GiggleMed medical humor gift store).

We’ve all heard of Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  But what about all of those people that we work with in health care?… you know… those people that are nowhere to be found in Mr. Covey’s book.  Just to make sure we’re all talking about the same people, here are the 7 Habits of Highly Annoying Nurses:

• Just calling “to let you know”.
• Writing “Doctor aware”.
• Saying, “It’s not my patient”.
• Referring to patients by their room numbers and not knowing their names.
• Smoke breaks.
• Waiting until the end of their shift to start their charting.
• Writing that they “read back” an order, when they did no such thing.

Feel free to add others for consideration.  Send us an email or just post a comment below.  For those annoying nurses that took offense to this post… two things: (1) If you do three or more of the above, you have no one to blame but yourself, and (2) the next post is one that you’ll love – The 7 Habits of Highly Annoying Doctors.  :0)

How many endocrine disorders to you see represented in this nurse clip art?

This is not a GiggleMed image. And it’s probably not meant to be funny.

You know that phenomenon of looking at someone and secretly wondering about their medical disorders just based on looking at them? We all do it and we rarely talk about it. It’s not really appropriate to bring it up outside of the health care setting.

Well, the same thing happened the other day when this clip art image was posted on a NPO sign outside of a patient’s hospital room. One endocrine disorder immediately jumped out, but on closer inspection, there are several. You can see the answer here, on this Endocrine Humor – Poster Child graphic.