Saturday, April 22, 2006
Nurse Betty says "smoke 'em if ya got 'em"!
I was hanging out while my daughter was getting her hair cut the other day and I heard the patron in the next chair tell her stylist that she was in the health care field, working as a cardiac nurse. The subject then segued into a proposed bar and restaurant smoking ban in the area.
At one point, the nurse says "Well, we certainly don't want to ban smoking, that might make my job obsolete!" WHAT!?!? Have I been running around bouncing on a cloud all this time thinking that people in the health care field actually want to HELP people and PREVENT disease?
Smoke up, folks! Mmmmm...isn't that goooood? Have another? Here's my card.
WTF? Of course, having lost my own mother to lung cancer may charge up the topic *just a smidge* for me, but STILL!
I know this isn't the way all health care professionals think. I've run across quite a few doctors that CLEARLY keep the needs and comfort of their patients top of mind, but earning an MD or a nursing degree by NO MEANS makes you a humanitarian.
While I was getting my first real physical in years, the new Internal Med doc I'd chosen commented that my ENT was a "good doctor". I later told her I was shopping around for a new one because he had the bedside manner of a rotting fish. Somewhere in there I dropped the word "asshole". And this is why I know I made the right choice for my new doctor. She said "I'm pretty sure that being an asshole is a prerequisite to be an ENT." *tear* I love her!
I was hanging out while my daughter was getting her hair cut the other day and I heard the patron in the next chair tell her stylist that she was in the health care field, working as a cardiac nurse. The subject then segued into a proposed bar and restaurant smoking ban in the area.
At one point, the nurse says "Well, we certainly don't want to ban smoking, that might make my job obsolete!" WHAT!?!? Have I been running around bouncing on a cloud all this time thinking that people in the health care field actually want to HELP people and PREVENT disease?
Smoke up, folks! Mmmmm...isn't that goooood? Have another? Here's my card.
WTF? Of course, having lost my own mother to lung cancer may charge up the topic *just a smidge* for me, but STILL!
I know this isn't the way all health care professionals think. I've run across quite a few doctors that CLEARLY keep the needs and comfort of their patients top of mind, but earning an MD or a nursing degree by NO MEANS makes you a humanitarian.
While I was getting my first real physical in years, the new Internal Med doc I'd chosen commented that my ENT was a "good doctor". I later told her I was shopping around for a new one because he had the bedside manner of a rotting fish. Somewhere in there I dropped the word "asshole". And this is why I know I made the right choice for my new doctor. She said "I'm pretty sure that being an asshole is a prerequisite to be an ENT." *tear* I love her!
Comments:
Um, yeah. That's definitely a WTF? moment. My dad is an RT (respiratory therapist) and I know that he doesn't have that attitude.
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