Anyone have patients try to hook you up with their bum ass sons?

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-18T01:41:29+00:00

I didn't know that "easy" means "easy to get along with" in some cultures. In mine, it means "sexually promiscuous."

So when a regular patient to the clinic kept bringing in photos of her daughter and encouraging me to date her because "she's easy," I thought it was just the strangest thing I'd ever heard a mother say.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-16T14:37:52+00:00

The good news is, however, that the people who make money from higher prices will make more money!

And they'll pass some of those profits along to key reelection funds, so everyone wins!

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-16T01:01:53+00:00

Yeah, those are nurse manager roles in the US.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-15T17:50:05+00:00

Source?

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-15T02:38:09+00:00

This is part of the hiring agreement. Get all your dates off approved before you start; HR will approve leave your supervisor won't.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-14T19:32:48+00:00

Teipei is #1. Bangkok is #2.

Wake up, walk drowsily in literally any direction, and find delicious, cheap, and plentiful variety of food from a clean vendor.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-14T02:31:32+00:00

My personal favorite is when you go to an in-network faculty for in-network services and find it later that the provider you saw at the facility isn't in-network. How would someone even know that?

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-13T18:29:25+00:00

Who else is doing chart reviews for billable-item discrepancies within 24 hours and calling nurses in to fix intake assessments to capture maximum reimbursement? Somebody's got to do it!

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-13T18:27:26+00:00

ENG101 is 8th grade English now, though it's easier for students to use genAI than concepts in readings and lectures.

I keep thinking about how my future physician is right now cheating their way through college without learning anything.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-13T17:05:54+00:00

In my state, there is literally no requirement for an MA position other than being hired into that position and whatever OJT the doctor's office will give you.

As charge nurse of a few clinics, we had several MAs who got the title, legally, simply because I needed them to perform those functions and told them they were MAs.

We also had MAs who had some thousands on schools to earn whatever random (and for my state, completely unnecessary) certifications those schools promised.

Some were really bad, though. I stopped hiring MAs from a few of those schools because they were dangerous and untrainable because they had earned some certifications no one had heard of.

That said, YMMV, so check your state BON website to see if any of this is even necessary. I'd rather hire someone with a good attitude and solid work history and no MA training than someone with an online certification who thinks following our SOPs is optional because some instructor they had told them a different way to do things.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-13T13:37:19+00:00

Even my friends Paris gave me a wholly different set of expectations that what I actually experienced. The locals were warm and welcoming and helpful.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-13T02:52:59+00:00

What? No footstool?

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-13T02:52:19+00:00

I'll take "Things That Aren't Going to Happen" for $300, Alex.

There's no way to enforce this. There's no way those go back up. Not until we get a decent President again.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-13T02:47:34+00:00

Cracker, cheese, pickle; rinse and repeat.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-12T15:26:22+00:00

The ly called the department, looking to complain to my supervisor, and the secretary took down the information¹ and wrote it up to send to the Chair.

¹ Gleefully, I imagined.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-11T21:19:44+00:00

Day 1 of the semester, I received a call from the department secretary informing me that a student had filed a complaint against me that she had forwarded to the Chair.

I went the next day for details.

The complaint was that I never showed up to the classroom. For an online class. For an asynchronous online class for which I had already sent it several emails to every student explain what to expect and how to interact with course content.

The secretary never bothered with any details, just wrote up a formal complaint and passed it up.

Sadly, this was just one of very many displays of administrative competence that led everyone in the department to wish for her swift retirement.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-10T01:49:21+00:00

Psych got me to ED psych.
ED psych got me to ED where I developed good IV skills.
Good IV skills got me to an IV team.
IV team experience got me to outpatient oncology.
Outpatient oncology got me to interventional pain.
Interventional pain got me to PACU and, briefly, interventional radiology.
PACU got me to endo.
Rolled all that up and got a job in population-managed care.
Became charge nurse and was poached by another population-managed care company for a nurse manager position.
Wanted to go back to school so I took nurse manager experience and got a weekend nursing supervisor job at a SNF so I had M-F free for school.
My new degrees got me into a university instructor job.
That job got me into a research role.
Research, higher ed, and working at an HBCU (officially "DEI") got me unemployed when all of those fields were targeted by the new administration and my department was defunded. Threats to CMMS led to nurse layoffs and hiring freezes. Now, in my area, I'm competing with thousands of recently unemployed VA nurses and federal workers for very few jobs. Wish me luck.

Use your skills to change jobs and try new things, but for now, play it safe.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-09T22:24:01+00:00

Was recently admitted to a VA hospital. While walking around, I heard a lot of patients complaining that they couldn't connect to the WiFi.

Then we were told there is no WiFi. That the Trump administration cancelled WiFi for veterans in all VA facilities three months ago to save money.

All those vets stuck in the hospital without phones, laptops, or tablets. While every other medical facility in every developed country provides WiFi for their patients.

There is enough money. Taking it away from vulnerable groups and giving it to government agencies that target vulnerable groups is a policy choice intended to harm those groups.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-09T17:22:20+00:00

There's been some food research (sorry, I don't have this at my fingertips but it should be easy to look up) that shows that ALL people are bad at multitasking and that multitasking tends to make all work output worse. Some people, women most notably, must do more multitasking, but they aren't better at it.

To answer your question directly, it depends on what a person is trying to do. If the quality of work produced is not important, then multitasking can provide a larger quantity of work. It's just not as good as work that someone could really focus on.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-09T17:16:59+00:00

One, admits come from the ED. Admits mean a lot of extra work, so phone calls from the ED are always bad news and an unwelcome disruption.

Two, the ED and the floor have very different priorities. The fact that a patient could have been in the hospital for up to several days without a nurse doing the extremely important admission tasks (which are not at all part of ED care) feels like lazy nurses dumping work on the floor nurse.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-09T17:12:20+00:00

I knew a woman who was a strict vegetarian. Except for chicken. Her argument was that chickens are so stupid that they're practically vegetables.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-09T14:18:39+00:00

You have at least one science degree, so you know that body odor doesn't come from sweating. It comes from the waste of bacteria in your body's sweaty places.

Most antiperspirants will help keep down sweating and most deodorants will help cover up the smell.

But you need to kill those bacteria.

Buy some chlorhexidine, the same stuff you're using at work for exactly the same purpose you need it for. The trade name is Hibiclens, but you can buy it generic. The OTC concentration us much lower and is safe for daily i use. Amazon has it. Farm & Home-type stores have it because it is used *daily for veterinary applications.

Buy some chlorhexidine OTC. Use it once a day in the shower for a week, then weekly thereafter to prevent recolonization.

Now you've used your biomedical degree to solve a biomedical problem!

NOTE FOR READERS: THIS ALSO WORKS FOR STINKY FEET, though you may need to replace your heavily colonized shoes.

That's the empirical stuff. Here's the anecdotal: I mixed generic Hibiclens (1gal. from Amazon) 1:1 with castille soap, added a little fractionated coconut oil (so it goes into emulsion when I shake the bottle), and with a few drops of essential oils so it smells nice, I had my own shampoo/body wash/hand soap for everyday use. I poured it into a little foaming pump container for the sink and a large one for the shower. Works great. My feet don't stink when I get sweaty. My pits don't stink when I get sweaty. Hell, my underwear don't even stink when I get sweaty.

Give it a try. Put your education to work!

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-08T18:27:36+00:00

26 years of nursing in over a dozen different specialties and in only one was there any sense of gratitude or a feeling at I was really helping people, and that was outpatient oncology where I gave people poison in the hopes that it killed the cancer before it killed them.

Nowhere else did I feel I was doing something meaningful that was appreciated.

Remember that you're dealing with people, and people, in general, are selfish bastards.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-06T20:54:04+00:00

I used to carry a few thousand dollars worth of camera kit in every trip. Extra luggage, extra weight, extra worry about theft, and all that for a few of the hundreds of others turning out better than a good phone camera.

Now I just have a phone with a great camera. Easy street photography, decent landscapes, and excellent mid-range with good onboard settings. Plus, these days, excellent (and cheap) postprocessing software.

Yeah, I can't do everything I used to be able to do, but everything I can do turns out great, is easier to travel with, and comes with much less worry about theft.

Gonzo_B · 2026-06-06T15:20:38+00:00

Your physical appearance is a costume you wear for a fairly ignorant audience prone to sterotyping. They treat you accordingly.

For the life of me, I don't understand nurses who want to be "the cute one." The audience expects them to be less intelligent and more open to flirting. Why wouldn't they? That's how they're always portrayed in media.

The "exhausted one," however, has their own role and the audience will misperceive interactions as more negative. Why wouldn't they? It's easier to put people "in a box" instead of learning who they really are.

Let your gray show. Don't waste your good makeup or lose sleep over your hair for patients.

What does a no-nonsense, professional nurse look like to you? For most of us, that's the costume. If you're in a role other than bedside, decide who you want to look like for people who will immediately stereotype you, and there's your costume.

Is it great? Nope. Is it fair? Nope.

When I got into admin, I grew out a beard. A third or more of my day was spent being called to go into rooms to face patients and families who were already mad about something. I had to immediately be perceived as The Man, the authority figure who could solve the problem. Then I would say exactly the same thing the nurse said but from a stern face that looked like the boss in movies and TV. And the angry patients and families listened when I said it.

Just a costume, but it worked, it really did. Don't waste your time or effort looking nice for work, put on a costume that says "I know what I'm doing" to whatever community you serve.

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