Call Secrets of the OR #6- Sometimes you get beaten by the buzzer

Look, we are in the business of solving the case, of being the kiss on a boo-boo, of the patient having a problem and we need to fix it, of being the buzzer beater every damned time.

Sometimes that doesn’t happen.

And it sucks.

I had a difficult case a few weeks ago.

The kind of case where the patient is going to sleep and I am holding their hand, telling them that their son told me to tell the patient “I love you from your Danny.” He told me this while I was getting a phone consent with another nurse because the son was frantically waiting for his flight to get to the area and the patient, who was struggling to breathe, smiled.

The kind of case where you are listening to the pulse ox beeping get lower and lower and, without letting go of their hand you turn your head and tell the scrub tech to please let the first arrivers to the pre-op area (0530) to be on stand-by because the patient might need them.

The kind of case where the abdominal blocks are on hold because if the patient goes straight to the unit what’s the point of them?

The kind of case where you call the anesthesiologist back to the pre-op area that is also PACU at 0400 to tell them of the patient’s desired code status.

The kind of case where the anesthesiologist came right back and spoke to the patient and the son on the phone about what needed to happen about the code status during surgery.

The kind of case where there are a thousand different needs from the field, from the anesthesia team, from the front desk calling you for some reason because they want to tell you not to call in the PACU nurse.

The kind of case where before you even are in the room with the patient you look to see where the open beds are, hoping that there is an intensive care bed.

The kind of case where you text the nursing supervisor that you will need an ICU bed as you are on the phone with pharmacy looking for the coumadin antagonist that has been ordered. STAT.

The kind of case where the surgeon asks for an impossible item that does not live in the hospital, despite you mentioning it several times that it has been requested. The surgeon didn’t want to use the off-brand disposable.

The kind of case that when day shift workers, who have shown up by now, are in the room for the sixth time asking how they can help you send them to get gloves and to try to find the piece of equipment that the surgeon is demanding that you know doesn’t live in the hospital.

The kind of case where the surgery is cut short and the surgeon says that the patient will have to come back to the OR in the next day for completion of the surgery after the patient was worked up a bit more (we call that resuscitation). Because the surgeon knew that the patient was too ill to continue surgery, after the offending part had been excised.

The kind of case where you’d love to go home and get back into bed but you’ve a full day planned between meetings for the hospital and a long delayed birthday lunch.

The kind of case where you leave the patient open because of the need for a further surgery shortly. Open but with a wound-vac.

The kind of case where you call and ask the pre-op area to please get the ICU bed from ICU and a transport monitor and the bed that is left for the patient is a regular patient bed. And the transport monitor? It is dead.

The kind of case where it takes so long to pack the patient and their various lines up and get ready to bag the patient all the way to the ICU the ICU bed and monitor make it downstairs. And you help put the patient on it, making sure that all the lines and the foley is untangled and not caught.

The kind of case where you clock out at 0830, an hour and a half after your end of shift.

The kind of case where you tell the front desk, the unit admin, the charge nurse that the ice cream you’d made for the ice cream social that afternoon was in the freezer and every damned person in the lounge and at the desk freezes and says they forgot that it was today. You collect money and go to the grocery store across the street and buy 4 gallons of ice cream, ice cream bars, 3 different types of syrup, canned whipped cream, sprinkles, spoons and bowls for the exact amount that you collected from the guilty coworkers who forgot about the 11th annual ice cream social. It isn’t like this happens every year.

The kind of case where you go home and stare at the wall for awhile. But you have meetings to attend! So you get up and join the meeting.

The kind of case where you never know the outcome because the patient was transferred to a higher acuity hospital and it is against policy to open up charts willy-nilly because you are curious.

Ugly calls will exist.

What matters most is that you were able to comfort the patient as they went to sleep and you were able to pass on the message from their loved one. What matters most is that you were able to manage all of the calls and push and pulls of day shift and the call shift in that moment.

And that there was ice cream.

Call Secrets of the OR #4- Every call shift will end… Tomorrow!

The shift will end
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There’ll be sleep!

Just thinkin’ about shift end
Clears away the cobwebs
And the sorrow
’til there’s none!

When I’m stuck in a shift
That’s long
And forever
I just stick out my chin
And grin,
And say,
Oh.

The call will end
Tomorrow
So I’ve got to hang on ’til tomorrow
Come what may!

Tomorrow!
Tomorrow!
I will sleep
Tomorrow!
Sleep’s only a shift away!

Apologies to Martin Shaman and Charles Strouse for co-opting and re-writing their hit “Tomorrow” from the Broadway musical Annie.

As a night shifter, I know that sleep is very important. And some nights we don’t get a lot of it. But that is the nature of the call shift. Sometimes there isn’t a lot of sleep, and sometimes it is a full night of it. You have to be able to roll with the schedule.

The first thing my university advisor asks when she sees me is “How’s the sleep? Are you getting enough of it?” Yes, Dr. Advisor, I am getting enough sleep. I have data points to share if you are interested. Maybe I should make it into a graph for show and tell purposes.

That being said, and knowing that not everyone tracks your own sleep patterns, there are some things that can be done in your sleep environment to prepare yourself for good sleep.

Is the room cool enough? A University of Texas sleep specialist, Dr. Okeanis Vauu, reported that sleeping in a cool dark room is recommended. After all, our brain wants a cooler temperature while we sleep. This information is from a UT article on sleep after the spring forward time change.

But it is definitely appropriate for sleeping after a call shift.

The dark room during the day may be harder to accomplish. I have purchased black out curtains until I am blue in the face but they are never dark enough. Next I found and purchased black out blinds that you cut to size. I cut and installed these after the first month I was on call.

Instant bliss. Not to mention cooler.

In the summer, I also put up heavy curtains in the adjoining bath because of the afternoon sun that 1) heats up the small room, and 2) is blindingly bright.

My husband works afternoons/nights and is glad for the additional window coverings.

We don’t have children to get off to school or children at home. Unless you count the cat, who insists that I get out of bed by 0800 every morning, whether or not I’ve worked the night before. But I have heard that can be a barrier for some.

Sleep when you can. Some people can go right to bed when they get home and this is a good habit to get into.

Because you never know when the next case will pop up. There have been times that I’ve been home and in bed for 15 minutes and the darned pager went off again. And I head back to the hospital for another case.

Thankfully those kind of nights are hopefully far apart. And if it is a string of late nights just remember that day shift will be in a 0700 to relieve you so you can go home and sleep.

No bad pattern lasts forever. Some last longer than most but that’s call life.

I find it best not to focus on the sleep you’re missing but instead focus on the good sleep you will get the next day because you won’t be responsible for day cases. And the hospital won’t be ringing you up with add ons.

Remember, there is always a shift end. There is also a finite amount of time that the case volume can hurt you and stop you from sleeping.

These tips are coming from a call afficionado: make your room as dark as you can, and make your room as cool as you can. Fans are a good help here.

And take the afternoon nap when you are able to. Especially if the house is still and silent because everyone else is away at school or work.

Pay attention to your sleep hygiene and practices while on call. Well, any night really, but especially on call.

Call is only a sleep debt if you want it to be.

Tuesday Top of Mind 8/12/2025- Vaccine lies lead to deadly shooting at the CDC

The original title of this post was Panic at the CDC, with a subtitle of no, this ain’t no disco.

Then I thought better. Time to call the vaccine lies what they are, lies. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary the definition of a lie is to “make an untrue statement with the intent to deceive”.

We need to start naming the lies.

None of this namby-pamby “mistruths”, “states without evidence”, “mislead”, “false”, and “fabrications”. All of those words mean the same thing. That someone is not being honest with you *cough, cough, RFK Jr., Fox News* for their own benefit.

Use the word lie(s). Tell it like it is.

It is a good rule of thumb to interrogate your feelings about what you are being told. And also consider the motive behind the one telling you these “truths”. Is it to make you mad? Is it to make you do something that you would not normally do? Such as shoot up the very place that works, and has worked since 1946, to keep the public safe.

This is about a man who was poisoned by the media he was ingesting, not the vaccine that he receive. He thought, probably because that is what he was told, that the vaccine was making him depressed and suicidal.

So, emboldened by the lies that were being told to him at the highest levels and the news, the shooter gathered up his guns and went to kill the very thing he blamed for how his life had gone off the rails.

Never mind that the CDC had been actively working to keep him alive and in good health.

No.

He went to the CDC campus in Atlanta, Georgia and fired 180 rounds into the buildings. He broke 150 windows by firing indiscriminately at four buildings. He was not on the CDC campus, instead firing from the second floor of a CVS across the street.

He also killed a first responder, a Dekalb police officer by the name of David Rose. This was a man who will be missed by his wife and children. He was shot responding to the shooting.

This is an ongoing story and investigation. However, it is also a moment of reflection.

I certainly hope those who are spewing anti-vaccine lies and rhetoric do not sleep easy knowing that their reckless lies and breathless new reports caused this.

According to the CDC website, and the various vaccine makers such as Pfizer and Moderna, depression and suicidal ideation is not a side effect of the vaccines.

And no, I will not be naming the coward who thought it was a good idea to listen to the lies and act upon them. That is readily available.

As always when you are confronted with a news report, Facebook post, text from a friend, consider who your anger benefits.

For fuck’s sake, stop calling it misinformation and use the word lie!

Call secrets of the OR #1- Know call time is not your own

Instead of Best Kept Secrets of the OR I thought instead to start a new subset of Wednesday. This is going to be Call Sets of the OR.

I got the idea last night when I had a surgeon, a CRNA, and the surgical tech all tell me that the case we were about to start would horribly. I reminded them that we could not know that and I believed in the power of positive thinking. That thinking and speaking negatively might just create the very negative reality for us and the patient.

No wonder they called me Pollyanna Puke on the floor.

But that is another call topic for another time.

The very first call secret is one that I know that a lot of my fellow operating room people fail at.

And that is knowing that the hours you are on call is not your own. By that I mean that the hours are not yours to do with as you wish and you might get called in during that time. But if you are called in, you are unpleasant and drag your feet on everything.

That is no way to create a positive experience for the patient.

Look, having to undergo semi-urgent or emergency surgery, because that is what the call case make-up should be, is no walk in the park for them. The patient has to be NPO, dressed in tissue paper, have an IV, and have anesthesia. This might be run of the mill for us but maybe they’ve never had surgery before and they are scared out of their wits.

Or maybe they’ve had surgery before but it was years ago when they were a kid and all they remember is being cold and dressed in tissue paper and surrounded by people in funny blue clothes that are not their mommy or daddy and being held down and having to breath in a yucky gas and then nothing until they wake up in a too bright room with yet more strangers and their wrist or their ears or their tummy hurts. And so they are scared out of their wits.

It is rare to have a patient who is laissez-faire about having surgery.

The patients are who the call nurse needs to be thinking about while they are on call. And how to make their experience smooth and efficient.

It is a mind shift for sure.

Make it less I HAVE to go in and more I GET to go in.

Do I know how to make the mind shift? No. The only thing that I know is that the brain is kind of like a muscle. You have to work on changing your own mindset.

Frankly, it can take some time, and repeated calls.

Ultimately we don’t take call for ourselves. Some of us might take call for the extra pay, or to pay back a favor to a coworker, or so that a coworker will owe you a favor. A lot of people take call because it is mandatory. Those are the calls that I took, back when I was the evening charge nurse and scooping up all the calls. Because the person whose call it was didn’t want it.

So don’t make plans. Your call hours are not your own. At the very most make vague plans. And realize that a call from the supervisor can and will change them in an instant.

North Carolina is going Surgical Smoke FREE

dun-dun-DUN–dun-dun-DUNan–dun-dun-DUN-dun dun

This is the opening guitar riff of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple. Go to YouTube and check me. You know that I am right.

It was 8 years ago that I recognized that other people, often with less years in the OR, would react to the shall we say unsightly odors of some surgeries. Smells would hit me later in a case than others. A surgeon and a tech would react to the smell of an appendix or open abdomen and it wasn’t until it was closer to me such as when I was collecting the specimen that the smell would make it to my scent receptors, and I would become aware of what they were talking about.

This was a very gradual awareness, brought on by what I assumed was a very gradual over- exposure to the bovie smoke.

Let’s talk about the effects of surgical smoke. It has been compared to smoking 30 unfiltered cigarettes per day. Surgical smoke also contains arsenic, smoke particles, people particles (live tissue fragments), e-coli, SARS-Cov-2 (aka covid), toxic gases, benzene and hydrogen cyanide. It can cause a decreased sense of smell, asthma, allergies, chronic bronchitis, chronic sore throat, and even chronic lung diseases.

Forthwith I became aware that my sense of smell had been altered by 23 years in the operating room. Many of those years were in heavy surgical smoke plume cases- total joints, plastic surgery, and open abdomens.

Surgical smoke is created by use of an electro-cautery device, most often a bovie. This piece of electrical cautery equipment was named after the Dr. William T. Bovie who developed the electrical cautery machine in 1926. This was used to stem the bleeding cause by incisions and surgery.

In 2018, Rhode Island became the first state to enact legislation to ensure that all hospitals and free-standing ambulatory centers used a smoke evacuator in the OR. Many other states joined them- Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Minnesota, West Virginia, and Washington.

AND NORTH CAROLINA!!!

We make the 19th state that has elected to protect their nurses, scrub techs, surgeons, and patients.

Smoke free is a misnomer. It is a short hand way of saying that the surgical smoke plume is contained at the site of surgery with smoke evacuation.

However, Governor Josh Stein just signed it into law. To go into effect January 1, 2026.

The hospital system I work for started mandating surgical smoke evacuation during covid. Because, as you may have noticed above, covid is carried by surgical smoke.

Did I write this legislation? No.

However, I have written, and spoke to surgeons, and written legislators, and called legislators, and signed petitions. Basically, we kept up pressure. I even used surgical smoke legislation in the Health Care Policy and Ethics class that I took fall semester 2023. This was when the NC legislature was waffling about it. I did presentations and wrote papers about the dangers of surgical smoke and the importance of going smoke free. I shared the papers and presentations with anyone who asked.

I needed this win today.

Oh, happy day!

Tuesday Top of Mind 6/17/25- Death from a thousand cuts

Piggybacking on FFS Fridays post from last week titled TNTC, AKA too numerous to count, I want to be clear on what happened to women in the past who did not have access to safe abortion care.

THEY DIED.

I want to be clear about what happened to children who did not received vaccines (they hadn’t been developed yet).

THEY DIED.

I want to be clear about what happened to everyday people who didn’t have access to quality healthcare.

THEY DIED.

I want to be clear about what happened to diabetics who did not receive insulin. This was in the before times when insulin resistance was not a thing.

THEY DIED.

Or they ate a horribly restricted diet under the guidance of a doctor. This was begun in 1915 and lasted until insulin was developed in 1922. The patients “lived” on 500 calories a day, with one fasting day per week. This was to keep their glucose in check. Or, knowing that this horrible disease was due to the patient not being to metabolize carbohydrates (they thought), there was also an animal diet where the patient only ate meat and fats. But in the post WWI world, who had that kind of money. Otherwise…

THEY DIED.

I want to be clear about what happened to babies who were born before 35 weeks. This was before the isolette which was developed in the 1880s to keep premature babies warm by Stephane Tarnier, a French physician.

THEY DIED.

I want to be clear about what happened to patients who developed gangrene from wounds before penicillin was discovered in 1928.

THEY DIED.

I want to be clear about what happened to women and children who were widowed and orphaned, respectively, and were sent to poorhouses because there was no longer anyone working.

SOME DIED.

I want to be clear about what was a major cause of death of women before the mid 20th century. Childbirth, many, many women DIED in childbirth.

I want to be clear about what happened to babies with congenital heart malformations such as Tetralogy of Fallot or a patent ductus arteriosus (which is the failure of the pathway between the two major arteries of the heart) or a transposition of the great arteries (the switching of the pulmonary artery and the aorta).

THEY DIED.

In agony.

I want to be clear about what happened to the babies who were born different and twisted.

They got sent away to an institution and THEY DIED EARLY.

All of the advancements brought to you by medical pioneers and researchers and you want to throw it away?

Worse, the government wants to throw it away. And toss money after it because of the cancelled trials.

Shame.

Tuesday Top of Mind 6/10/25- It’s okay to lie to the Senate under oath, I guess. Noted.

This headline can mean so many, many things and so many, many lies. <Cough cough> Brett Cavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett Neil Gorsuch and the settled law of Roe v Wade. <Cough cough> Michael Cohen and the plans to build a Trump tower in Moscow. <Cough cough> W. Samuel Patten and the little matter of being a foreign agent.

Man, I should really see someone about that cough.

But I will not see RFK Jr. as he is the latest one to outright lie in order to get confirmation.

He told the Senate that he would leave in place the vaccine advisory panel at DHHS. This is a board made up of outside experts on illnesses that can be mitigated by vaccines. You know, people who have been working for literal YEARS in the fight against illnesses that we have a vaccine for.

By this firing and attempting to ram in the anti vaccine zealots and toadies in their place, RFK has come out soundly against science.

Well, we knew that.

He says that to re-establish faith in vaccines this is a step that must be taken. Collectively the entire research community rolled their eyes so hard they could see their very big brains.

Um, dude, the person who broke the faith in vaccines was you. Just you. Also anyone who professed anti vaccine rhetoric for the ‘gram and for the views. And for the money that thrown at them.

It is always the money. The money and the power.

The call is coming from inside the house. And we should all be afraid.

The kicker is we warned you. And warned you. And warned you. We did everything except sky writing. But since we aren’t pretty blond trad wives we were ignored.

People are gonna die. I feel like I say that all the time. Let me check real fast the last several months/years of Tuesday Top of Mind.

Yes, I say it all the time and no one is listening.

Are you paying attention yet?

School Me Saturday 5/31/25- Personal school dispatch

Well, I’ve not done one of these for a while now. In fact, I can’t remember the last one I did. And I find that is completely normal. After all, the not so stated plan for a PhD program is to remake you. It just might take a little longer.

In the beginning I was so energized and full of zeal to learn. What a difference three years makes. I am still energized about learning. I am still zealed (?!?) to learn about research.

Here comes the big but.

If I followed my learning timeline of what classes and when I was supposed to graduate at the beginning of May 2025.

Spoiler alert, I did not graduate in May 2025.

All of the core classes are completed. My pilot study has been completed. I even presented a poster based on the pilot study in April at the AORN convention and I am slated to present virtually at the hospital system research symposium in the beginning of June. I am also responsible for a virtual symposium presentation in November.

Yes, all based on the same research from the pilot. The last two are podium presentations where I have to actually talk to people. Maybe there will be a podium, if not I will pretend.

All of these different presentations, the poster and the podiums, is known as dissemination. Getting the information that I’ve worked very hard on for over a year out to the public. Well, other healthcare professionals.

Instead I had the most challenging health year of my life. Getting older is not for sissies. Midlife crap threw me for a loop. We don’t talk about that enough as women and I am so excited that perimenopause and menopause talk has entered the conversation in the mainstream. Perimenopause can cause a host of problems and I had most of them. Cutting to the quick of it, it certainly made my life hell in the last year and certainly knocked me for a loop. But that is a blog post for another time. And not the core reason my school plans got knocked a little awry.

That not so lovely reason is the 2024 election.

And the crap fall out from that.

Suddenly research was under even more stress, if not outright attacks from the people who find it more profitable to pretend not believe in it.

And then the attacks on the institutions who have massively contributed to our modern way of life through their research began.

Every day it felt like there was another strike.

And another.

I felt as if I had to bear witness to it all because someone has to be paying attention.

It was exhausting. Kind of like never ending bullshit torture akin to what I think being waterboarded feels like. Except it is shit decisions that have set the research community back many years. So many years.

All I could do was hold on and not give into the numbness that this crap is supposed to engender in people. Because that is their endgame.

I felt like we were thigh deep slogging through shit.

And then something flipped the mental switch.

I went from mad at the situation and the relentless attacks on research, on institutions to mad that they were making me doubt my path.

So what if research is a skeleton of what it used to be? I will be part of the resistance.

So what it publication is under attack and will no longer be the same. I will continue to write these dispatches.

So what if teaching jobs and professorships and colleges and programs and universities are retrenching their program offerings and job listings. I will continue to teach as I have, in small settings like the Call Bootcamp I run for new to the hospital nurses.

Because we are at war.

This is the “watch me” mad that fueled much of my other academic endeavors.

They think that they can make me stop? Through their pretend shock and awe campaign against the American people and institutions? Though unending waves of nonsense and threats and more threats?

It was a bad idea to make me mad to the “watch me” level.

Watch me resist this crap. Because I believe in science. I believe in research. I believe that colleges and universities. I believe in love. I believe that people have to right to own who they are. I believe in LGBTQIA+ rights. I believe that people have the right to read whatever they want to read, to watch whatever they want to watch. I believe that people are not pawns for the establishment.

You want me to fail because I am older? You want me to fail because I am a woman and that makes little men feel bad?

Fuck that.

Watch me succeed.

Tuesday Top of Mind 5/25/25- Be careful, germs are still trying to kill you

In a stunning surprise to no one who is interested in anything other than pursuing power and strengthening the echo chamber in which they live, this past however many days it has been since the inauguration and the shameful confirmation of an avowed anti-vaxxer to the chair of HHS has been an exercise in what the fuck.

Seriously though, is this man and his ilk interested in anything besides the cockamamie bullshit they believe, to the detriment of, well, everyone in the US.

Let’s count the says his administration of HHS has gone.

Number one is his insistence that, against all medical judgement and against swift action of diseases that we know are trying to kill us, that all vaccines must have an extra layer of blinded nonsense, a placebo barrier. The only thing that ‘obecalp’ ever did was kill people. (that is placebo spelled backward, they came up with this nonsense in the 1990s. It is basically a sugar pill to make you think you are being treated. Additional nonsense is up to and including the appointment of a known vaccine skeptic and all around terrible human and has no medical degree, David Geier, to investigate for the umpteenth time the debunked, but very real in their heads, link between vaccines and autism.

Maybe this time they will get an answer they think proves what they think. Spoiler alert, doing research with a foregone conclusion in your head is a terrible way to go about doing research.

THREE HUNDRED Americans are dying and will continue to die every week because of covid.

Yeah, still.

Bet you didn’t hear about that.

That is over one thousand a month.

Last week when the news broke that they were no longer recommending updated covid vaccines to those under 65, I immediately, without hesitation, made a covid appointment for the very next day. Not only that, I immediately texted my husband to make his own appointment. Again, for the very next day. This nonsense was released on Wednesday and by noon on Thursday we both had been vaccinated.

Other vaccine recommendation changes include that the vaccine is not recommended if you are under 65. Unless you have a concurrent comorbidity and are over 50, luckily obesity in the US is 40.3%. Otherwise you are out of luck. Today, they announced a stop to recommending that healthy children are no longer to get the covid vaccine. Never mind the one thousand and eighty six children who died from covid during what they consider the active pandemic. Taken against the estimated number of children in the US of 73,602,753, this comes out to a mortality rate of 0.0015%.

Not significant but not immaterial. Especially to the one thousand and eighty six families.

And whose definition of healthy?

Nothing was ever gained by denial and thrusting our heads into the sand.

Today HHS also came out against recommending the covid vaccine for pregnant women. Why? No idea. Because we know there is a link between covid infection and miscarriage. According to a study in the Lancet that Covid infection before or during pregnancy was associated with a two- to threefold increase in risk of miscarriage before 20 weeks. And since we already know that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, I feel that this is vastly short sighted.

Par for the course.

Of course, covid data is HARD to come by.

As if no one wants us to look at it.

Gee, I wonder why? (this is heavy sarcasm)

Congratulations to us! After canceling the meeting to decide on the 2025 flu vaccine, the FDA got their heads out of their collective asses and chose three viruses to include in the vaccine. Of course, selecting the viruses to be included is always a crap shoot. Just ask the 20,000 Americans who died of the flu in the 2024/2025 flu season.

Let me tell you, as a working nurse in the hospital during flu season and one who monitors bed usage and ER bed availability in my spare time, this last season was the worst one in years.

Tuberculosis remains a threat to school children in Kansas. Why is this important to know? TB kills the most people per year around the world. True it is most common in crowded living conditions. Like in jails or the new housing model for gen z. This is also known as pod living where you rent a bed (pod) in a house with other gen zers.

This most current outbreak in Kansas is still of concern. But you don’t hear of it, do you?

This bring us the third disease in our merry go round of death in America 2025, measles. There have been one thousand and forty six known cases in 31 states. Slightly less than the children who died of covid since 2020 (that we know of) but there have only been three deaths in this latest outbreak. Of course, two of them were children.

Yep, still a thing. Still spreading like wildfire because it is the most contagious illness in the world.

It is as if they want the immuno-compromised to die. After all, we spend sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much money on the chronically ill in America. According to the NIH, over ONE TRILLION dollars a year.

Do you see why medical professionals like me are concerned?

No.

Okay, well get your vaccinations. While you can.

I turn 50 in July and 50 is the age they offer the shingles vaccine. You bet I will be getting it the first week.

Idle question that popped into my head as I was finishing this, what happens if the autism rate goes up without vaccines? Or are they just “kidding”.

School Me Saturday 5/17/25-Preparing for a fall college fair

It’s been a minute since shared governance put on a college fair at the hospital.

There are a myriad of reasons so go ahead and pick one.

The pandemic. The four bulwark members were on zoom meeting for over a year.
Lack of interest by hospital members. We were too tired, too demoralized by watching the public ignore common sense protections. See reason 1.
The Great Resignation. This hurt the hospital in so many ways as people sought to make more and go to travel nursing or people left the profession all together because of, you guessed it, reason 1.

But now the units are bulking up their shared governance presence and interest. Even though some departments are still hurting for staffing they survive.

Seems like the perfect time to stage a comeback for the hospital college fair.

At one of the last college fairs we did, there was an overarching theme of “What if healthcare isn’t what I want to do for the rest of my life?” There were a few requests for colleges and trade schools that were not healthcare related.

Fair enough. Because not only do we have nurses and techs and CNAs who want to further their education, they also might have husbands and wives and children who want to do so as well.

I want to make this fall’s college fair at the hospital the most inclusive one yet.

Nursing schools will be represented.

But so will schools that have something other than nursing.

I have to start calling and emailing places soon.

Just as soon as we have a firm date. You know, other than “fall”.

Ideally it would be just before or in the of tuition reimbursement application window. Those dates I know.

Wish me luck. I already informed the president of the hospital that this was something shared governance was hoping to host in the fall. I also laid out the reasons for inviting not healthcare related school. They were fine with it although they would prefer that the team members stay at the hospital.

Again, fair. But we have to allow those team members who want to fly to fly.

You know?