I'm working in the ICU/CCU at the VA hospital through next Sunday. If you're not familiar with any of the VA hospitals, they are hospitals for military veterans. The VA's motto can best be described as: "Military veterans, thank you for serving our country, please let us serve your health care needs," and also, "It's only a matter of time before your COPD/alcoholic liver cirrhosis is diagnosed."
Why do I love the VA system so much? Most of the veterans I like well enough, but the electronic medical record is truly one giant, steaming, patriotic turd. It is a system whose organization is bizarre, the program for notes and labs is completely unconnected to the program for collecting vitals (WTF?), and trying to navigate it wastes a LOT of time.
Also... for some reason there seems to be a very low threshold for calling codes. I ran to two "codes" today- one ended up being for a man who NEARLY fainted after he got up from a blood draw at the outpatient lab downstairs (ie, was not coding), and the second code was for someone who was sitting in bed, breathing fine with a steady pulse, but was just very shaky because his calcium was low. Who the hell is calling these codes?!? "Code blue!"....you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means. (Princess Bride reference!) Maybe I should start calling codes whenever I feel like it. "Code blue, I can't get the printer to work!" "Code blue, the chicken in the cafeteria is overcooked!" "Code blue, I just dropped my pager and it fell down 2 flights of stairs while running to a fake code!!!"
Today the highlight of my day was eating steamed zucchinis for lunch, heavily seasoned with Mrs. Dash. The sole purpose of my life may be to help other people feel better about their lives in comparison. Does my life suck right now? In the sage words of the magic 8 ball, "all signs point to yes."
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