Continuing the Red, White, and Blue theme for the month today’s cookie is a blueberry cookie.
What kind of blueberry cookie?
No idea, really.
But not blueberry and lemon, I did that last month.
As I am looking for a recipe for this week, I am reminded about Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the little girl who steals and chews the feast gum.
Which is not ready for consumption.
Because the problems have not all been worked out.
This is a good comparison for the hospital.
Some things are tried and tested and never make it to production.
Some things are done because that is the way it has always been done.
The sacred cows of healthcare.
One sacred cow that I lived and worked by when I worked as a night shift CNA in a nursing home, and as a Med-Surg CNA, and as a Med-Surg nurse was that the patients have to be turned every 2 hours.
I thought, at the time, that this was highly scientific and logical because pressure becomes tissue injury become bed sores. It just makes sense.
A couple of months ago I read that patients should be turned every 2 hours because that was how often Florence Nightingale did it.
It took 2 hours to turn all the patients in the ward.
If the ward had been slightly bigger the rule of thumb would be every 2.5 hours.
If the ward had been slightly smaller the rule of thumb could very well be every 90 minutes. Science tells us this is the threshold for tissue injury.
200 years is a long time to do things because that is the way it has always been done.
Now nursing looks for evidence to back up the actions that we do.
We practice evidence based nursing.
I was encouraged to do blueberry lemon cookies.
Because that is the best.
However, I have a fresh lime.
Maybe it’s time to give blueberry lime a try.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 