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

OK. You might think this is cheesy. But I’m going to issue a blatant free bribe… Here it goes: I will give you the funny report/download 25 Things You Never Want To Hear During a Disimpaction if you just tell me one of two things…

1 – Give me feedback on the GiggleMed sites – good or bad – just tell me what you think.

or

2 – Tell me a funny healthcare story… anything that happened to you or a colleague.

That’s it. Not too bad, huh? I mean, does it get any better than this? You tell me how much you love my stuff and I send you a free disimpaction manual. Even though I’m totally deceiving you with the picture having a spiral bound manual, you still know this is a sweet deal. So hop to it. Laughter is the best laxative (that’s how it goes, right?).

Certainly a disimpaction manual is better than a manual disimpaction.

OK. This is disgusting…

I posted a question in Twitter where I asked people what they thought was growing on top of those hand gel dispensers. And a whole bunch of people sent me back some disgusting stories.

Not a week later… a friend of mine sees this (below) and sends me a picture from his iPhone. He had just finished seeing a patient in isolation for C.diff and almost swiped his hand across the top of someone’s drink that was resting on the isolation cart.

It got me thinkin’… maybe I should make pre-formatted PDFs for printing on stickers. Sure, we can write policy after policy… we can clean all of the cups up when the Joint Commissioners are on another floor… but if you really want to reach someone, do it with humor. I bet putting a C.diff sticker on that drink would do two things – (1) it would make them laugh, and (2) it would make them think.

If you have any ideas for stickers, let me know. In the meantime, I’ve posted a bunch of medical humor products that could serve the same purpose at the GiggleMed Store.

I toyed with the idea of a C.diff humor St. Patty’s Day promotion, but then came to my senses. Anyway, here’s the link:

Here’s a sample from GiggleMed’s funny list of Things You Should Never Say to a Pregnant Woman

• You might want to get off of that thing, I think there’s weight limit
• Did you ever see Alien?
• I see swollen people
• I’m sure you’re having a boy… Women become much more beautiful when they’re having girls
• When can I come by for the placenta?
• Pregnant?! How did that happen?
• For you, the puffy and edematous look is quite becoming.
• You really shouldn’t complain so much… There are some species of salamanders that can remain pregnant for up to 38 months.
• Are you sure you’re only nine months pregnant?
• It is amazing how closely your ankles resemble the trunk of this one tree in my front yard.
• I’ll betcha I can hold my urine longer than you
• It looks like you only have one more month to go
• Yeah, but it’s a good kind of fat
• As soon as you give birth, these are the days you’ll miss
• Did you see that documentary on elephant seals last night?
• So… you must be having twins
• Did they say it was human?
• It was an inney before, wasn’t it?

Got more? Post them in the comments below.

OK, so my wife is pregnant with #5. But, I have learned a lot since #1…

When we were med students, I made a comment that I thought she’d find funny. We were walking up a steep hill in the middle of Pennsylvania (an area I affectionately refer to as Pennsyltucky). My wife was 8 and a half months pregnant and visibly getting winded as we neared the top of the hill. I waited patiently… but waiting and silence, for me, is usually a bad combo. It’s usually a time that I try to make a joke – but not ideal because invariably, that’s a time when jokes are forced (and not spontaneous).

Nonetheless, I offered a point worthy of deep reflection… “Yeah, I know it must be tough, but at least we’re not salamanders. Apparently, some salamanders have a gestation period of up to 38 months.”

It didn’t go over well.

So, this time, with #5, I decided to get her some maternity humor gifts that I made with her in mind. No salamander references, though. (Click on the image if you know someone who might like these)

Here’s a sample from GiggleMed’s list of Things You Should Never Say to a Pregnant Woman:

• You might want to get off of that thing, I think there’s weight limit
• Did you ever see Alien?
• I see swollen people
• I’m sure you’re having a boy… Women become much more beautiful when they’re having girls
• When can I come by for the placenta?

I’ll post more in a few days. Got ideas? Post them in the comments section.

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).

OK, it’s time to revisit Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Last time, we looked at nurses. But this time we’re going to examine some habits of those doctors that get right under our skin, the annoying ones that everyone complains about, the doctors that are nowhere to be found in Mr. Covey’s book. Just to help you identify the people we are talking about, here are the 7 Habits of Highly Annoying Doctors:

• Calling consults before even seeing the patient.
• Going on vacation without arranging coverage… assuming that residents or hospitalists will cover.
• Despicable penmanship.
• Using prohibited abbreviations (and then having the kahonies to get angry when nurses or pharmacists call them on it).
• Always being late for meetings, appointments, and important events. Always.
• Asking a staff member a question without greeting them first (“Hello”, “Excuse me”, “Pardon me”, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but…” no greeting what so ever, none).
• Introducing themselves as “Doctor” after another doctor initiates the introduction using their first name (Goes like this… “Hi, I’m John Smith, one of the ER docs here. Nice to meet you.” “Oh, Hi. I’m Dr. Snobwalla, Chief of Surgery.”)

Feel free to list their other annoying traits. Send me an email or just post a comment below. If there are any other professions… say NPs, PAs, EMTs, etc that you think need a list of their own, let me know. :0)

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)