No, I don't HAVE the swine flu. But dealing with all the people who think they do is really getting on my nerves.
We had a very well-publicized death from the swine flu in our area recently (THANKS MEDIA!!), and yesterday had a huge upswing in visits from people "who need to get checked out."
I've had to explain eight gazillion times that:
-We don't swab for ANY flu if the patient is not sick enough to be hospitalized.
-If you don't have any symptoms, we can't "check you" for the flu.
-A slight cough, low-grade fever, and some body aches is not enough to get you hospitalized if you are a generally healthy person.
PLEASE TAKE OFF THE FREAKING MASKS ALREADY IF YOU ARE NOT SICK!!!! What I especially love is all the people walking around with the masks slung around their necks. The whole hospital looks like our surgery floor. Oh, and PLEASE stop asking for gloves. Just go wash your hands or use some hand sanitizer.
The most amusing episode in all of this was last night. The "asthma" area was full of wheezing people, thanks to our record-high pollen levels and fluctuating weather patterns. Two young women sit next to each other: an African-American girl and a white, Eastern European girl. The African-American girl is wheezing, coughing, feverish, has an obvious runny nose and looks unwell. The Eastern European girl has a low-grade fever with slight abdominal pain and vomited once.
One of my least favorite doctors swooped in and moved the Eastern European girl off to a bed, complete with mask on "because this might be the real deal." Uh huh. On further investigation, the African-American girl? Lives at the epicenter of all of the swine flu madness, and everyone in her family is sick. If you ask me, THIS lady is the one in contention for "the real deal." I found a spot for her to lie down and gave her a mask. She got admitted, and the swab was pending when I left to go home last night.
I can't shake my feeling that the doc moved the Eastern European patient to a bed because she bore a strong resemblance to his wife.
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9 comments:
And, you are probably right! Hi there, I am new to your blog. I am also an ER RN. I work in Colorado and we have had very few cases of the swine flu and every single one of them were minor.
We are doing flu washes if the pt presents with fever, runny nose and cough. But have had no positives.
Dont you just hate how the public kind of wants to catch it???
We gots no piggie flu in the northwoods, but the pollen, oh my god the pollen. Even with a double layer of antihistamines, I'm still a snotty, sneezing mess. Thanks, cities, for planting all male trees so we can wheeze our way through spring!
I'm heading down there this weekend, and if I have to wash my car again because of all the bees trying to hump it, I swear to dog, I'm going to lose it.
Northwoods Baby:
Yeah, we have the same pollen problem here, too--which is complicating things, because people with no previous allergies are messes (including me)and they all think they have the swine flu.
Whole thing has gotten blown out of proportion. REGULAR flu kills 26,000 every year in the U.S., and nobody prints it in the paper.
This flu just appeared on a slow newsweek, and the press made it hysteria.
Every damn patient with an itchy nose thinks they have it. And when their PCP refuses to give them anitbiotics, they call me, their dumb country neurologist.
I don't give them a script for Tamiflu either.
If anything, this flu hasn't done near the damage to ER' that the good ole fashioned flu does. How well I remember flu seasons in the ER's I worked at where I must have started 56 frigging IV's a shift.....aarghh!!! And I hated it when a person was being examined, surrounded by their concerned family, and then suddenly a family member impulsively decided that "maybe all of us ought to be checked!" Double aaarghhh!!!!
Just goes to show how many hypochondriacs/attention seekers we have in this country.
Any country, Jen. We don't have monopoly on human nature.
People alternate between panic about the things that are not a big deal, and complacency about things that really are dangerous. People are not good at making decisions. The media only make that worse.
Slow news week + scary sounding name = pandemic
Very funny.
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