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

Look… There is no NurseHog Day. No matter which day you wake up in Nurses Week… you only have six weeks left until the new interns arrive. So, enjoy those cheesy gifts… for the next 6 weeks anyway.

(Oh, and just for the record… I want to apologize to all of you who experienced my intern year. I am a much better doctor now, I swear.)

A serious reminder to patients out there… Interns are real doctors with a ton of knowledge. They are learning how to apply that knowledge, so it’s a little clumsy sometimes. Be patient and give them feedback.

A serious reminder to interns out there… “I don’t know but I’ll find out” is a good phrase to learn.

A serious reminder to nurses out there… Interns are not the enemy. Administrators are…just kidding

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 your mid-month dose of hospital chart bloopers (with my snide comments in italics and parentheses)… Here’s another set of funny medical malapropisms for you. Chart Farts® (: real stuff. real charts :)

• I had a bisectomy ’cause of all them damn kids (it’s a shame it wasn’t done a generation earlier)
• Condition on Transfer: Much better than on presentation
• Assessment: Palpitations – please see monitor (What’s next? Systolic murmur – go ahead and listen with a stethoscope)
• I had a cartridge taken out of my knee (I hear you get a rebate for recycling those at Staples)
• He is blind in his right prosthesis (Dude, everyone is blind in their prosthesis)
• Echo with tumor vs trombus (one of those Jamaican clots)
• Social history: He used to abuse drugs remotely (boy… the technology today…)
• ROS: Neurological – no ambition
• Based on lab data, he has a stable perianal itch. (Number 1 – Is an ‘itch’ ever stable? Number 2 – What lab data?!)
• Old Timer’s
• Oldheimer’s
• Discharge Diagnosis: Viral bacterial pneumonia
• Seashore disorder (We medical-types call them ‘seizures’)
• Chief Complaint: Responsive
• Admission diagnosis: Seizurettes (We medical-types call them ‘girly man seizures’)
• History of bipolar diarrhea (You should see the manic phase)
• Failure to dehydrate
• He could not stop vomiting diarreah
• Electric lytes
• Cardiac capitalization
• Follow up with vascular urine
• Increased aggitation to sedation
• Height: 163cm, Weight: 10.3Kg, BMI 3
• We did not repeat an EKG because we have an EF from a month ago.
• history of peripheral vascular disease in both lungs
• She has a drug addition problem (1 dose of painkillers = 2 dilaudids, 2 percocets, & a sniff o’ glue)
• O2 sat: 110% on room air
• His culture grew citrus bacteria
• Nosacomical pneumonia (Not so ‘comical’ to the hospital bean counters)
• A chest CT on the 10th was negative for intracranial hemorrhage
• Europathy (Thankfully, President Bush is recovering… after those Freedom Biotics)

Follow me on Twitter for some hilarious Chart Farts® and random medical funnies:

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).

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.