I love genuine questions and people putting in the effort to love and understand each other better. If you come at me just wanting to argue I’m going to troll you back. FAFO.

  • 41 Posts
  • 122 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle

  • Relying on emergency services only wastes soooooo much money. Waiting until problems are acute and they HAVE to be treated under EMTALA means doing way more expensive treatments and clogs up emergency services. Not to mention that not vaccinating or treating bacterial infections results in a bunch of cooties getting spread around the community. And when they’re getting those emergency services they can’t pay for them so the cost has to get absorbed into the bills of the patients who can pay either directly or through insurance.

    “I don’t wanna pay for other people’s Healthcare!”

    You already are, just in the least efficient and most expensive way possible.









  • One of the things my parents did understand correctly as “new money” is that a significant portion of piddling etiquette rules about what color to wear at what times of the year and which fork goes on the left were largely ways for the bourgeoisie to attempt to maintain their advanced standing against the increases in (the potential for) equality that capitalism initially brought about. Unfortunately my parents are also a very “well we got ours so everyone else must be lazy” type of people who think that’s as good as equality can or should get.


  • Eeeeh. I kinda get why it fell out of favor. For context, the weird thing about the nursing perspective vs the MD perspective is that you don’t get as much of the benefit of large studies, but you also aren’t as sensitive to big pharma marketing studies either which… good AND bad. Like for school I had to take a class on evaluating the validity of drug trials and one of the studies mentioned was taking advantage of the fact that there’s basically no equivalent doses between different antipsychotics but you can also look at the doses from an experienced clinician perspective and be like huh they’re saying this drug has less side effects compared to 20mg of Haldol daily, but literally ANYTHING has less side effects than 20mg of Haldol daily; that dose is insane. The nursing perspective also tends to be more sensitive to variations in the needs of local populations, you’ve lived in an area and worked within that specific demographic and environmental setting for a few decades vs the doctors main body of knowledge often even includes studies from across the world. Just giving some background as to the upsides and downsides of my perspective.

    So back to my point, I can tell you I associate lithium with being a last resort med for really sick patients who nothing else cuts it for. I associate it with horrible side effects including crazy weight gain and thyroid problems as well as fluid and electrolyte balances, and depakote and tegretol aren’t gonna cause that last one at all and also do have that advantage of blood level monitoring. I don’t see tegretol prescribed as much but depakote is probably what I see as the most prescribed med even before lamictal. Now lamictal I completely understand why I’m not seeing in the inpatient setting; you can’t rapidly titrate without risking the death rash (SJS/TENS), and the objective of inpatient care is always rapid stabilization with tweaking to occur in the community. And also maybe I’m associating lithium with all these horrible side effects because I’m seeing it used for patients suffering from both the direct effects of severe mania, especially those with the cumulative effect of multiple manic episodes over time, as well as all the other horrible things those episodes put them at risk of such as homelessness, substance abuse, and general increased risk of injury and illness due to decreased capacity for self care.

    I guess the TLDR is, it wouldn’t shock me if the inability to patent salt was the reason lithium isn’t preferred, but I also associate it with being a pretty old-school heavy hitter like thorazine is for psychosis, and while my perspective has the advantage of being more experiential, that comes at the disadvantage of being less empirical (but its also often difficult to tell how empirical some studies are due to the influence of capitalism on the development of pharmaceuticals).



  • As a professional I’d basically be required to say the above, but I’m also watching from the inside as my country’s health system decays starting with populations that were underserved to begin with like the mentally ill. In other news I have a hospice interview tomorrow. If nothing else I’ll just get to focus on making people comfortable. That sounds so relaxing. I’m getting tired of having to tell people no all the time.





  • I am absolutely awestruck by the amount of bravery and critical thinking under stress that it must have taken to understand that you needed to sign a DNR for your 7 year old. Most parents in your situation would barely be able to add up 2+2, let alone comprehend enough of what the doctor was saying to make that kind of decision.

    I’m also so happy for all of you that you wound up not needing that DNR. I hope she’s adapting well to her life with those limitations, but often children that age have enough neuroplasticity to work it out. She’s also certainly got parents who know how to put their own emotions aside and make sure she gets the care she needs, so under the circumstances she’s got a lot going for her. <3


  • The nurses and nursing assistants all have to wear trackers that track to see if they go near a hand sanitizer station or sink within 30 seconds after entering and 30 seconds before leaving a room. It’s to check for handwashing compliance but in addition to being a narrow and error-prone window it also doesn’t account for other common situations like poking your head into a room to check on someone while on the way to something else and not touching anything or anyone. It creates a situation where you’re better off just breezing through and ignoring a patient calling to you because if you go over there to acknowledge them but don’t have time to set down whatever you’re in the middle of, it’ll hurt your metrics. They might just need a cup of water you could grab and drop off on your way back in the other direction but fuck 'em, admin says you need to make a whole entry and exit ceremony of asking them what they need to keep your numbers up, so they’ll have to wait until you have time for that.



  • And if you’re really dedicated to being a person who saves lives and its a big part of your personal identity, you’d also be risking the lives of the future people you’d be able to help and your identity as a person who saves lives. You can’t help this one person in this specific life threatening situation but there’s other peripartum hemorrhages you could help and many more you could try to keep out of that condition to begin with. But to do that you have to let this one person die despite knowing how to help them too. Absolute shit sandwich.

    I’m working on developing a better work life balance but for the longest time working as a nurse has been the thing I stuck around on ye olde mortal coil for. It’s what was worth sticking around to try and get through all that therapy for. I won’t try to say it’s healthy but if I lost my license I don’t really have a whole lot left to stick around for.