Entitlement Disorder(tm) is a pervasive problem. It rears its ugly head on a regular basis causing distress, severe annoyance, bouts of nausea, and insufferable vexation in health care providers when they are faced with it. There are several ways of dealing with it but generally the preferred treatment, a swift ass-kicking, is not a viable option in the health care setting. Reactive sloth among us treating such patients is much more common. This occurs once ignoring fails.
Today a young woman of 21 was brought in frantically by her mother for vomiting after a night of ETOH drinking. Standing around outside her room, she grabbed everyone that came by asking if they could see her daughter – including house keeping staff, and transporters. Finally a random doctor was corralled into asking a nurse to start an IV line and fluids but then when the nurse did not abandon her other patient immediately, the woman called the patient representative and officially reported her. The woman continued to raise her voice and make loud pronouncements “IS ANYONE GOING TO HELP MY DAUGHTER?!?!?!”
Any wonder why a we all dragged our feet to get in there to finally see her? Any wonder why the nurse purposely took extra time in starting the IV, getting the zofran, and other meds? Any wonder we have nothing but contempt for this person? Any wonder her tires were strangely flat when her daughter was finally discharged?* Hmmmmm.
*OK I made up the bit about the tires
Yeah, I hate these people, too. They need some serious pillow treatment.
And here I thought I was the only one who thought high speed lead injection was appropriate for some folks!!!
these same types lo9ve to eat out making those forced to feed them need pillow time but we tend to self medicate
“vomiting after a night of ETOH drinking”
HOLY SHIT! CALL THE MEDICAL JOURNALS!!!
We have a heretofore unknown phenomenon (possibly causal relationship) – drinking followed by vomiting the next AM. I’ve never heard of such a thing! There could be some kind of medical breakthrough following on the heels of this discovery!
Seriously though, who the F* goes to the ED for a run-of-mill hangover? Stay home, drink fluids, puke, be miserable, AND GET OVER IT!
Funny post…love your tm–entitlement disorder. That is so fricking funny…I would laugh harder if it weren’t so damn true…someone needed to put a boot in that mother’s ass! LOL
“Entitlement disorder” – consider it stolen by me.
I really hope her insurance denies her every single penny.
You can be nice and give IV fluids and zofran.
In response to her mothers actions, you can give here a phenergan rectal suppository and water for oral hydration, and if she vomits a few more times then think about a line and labs. I think her mother would be going crazy after an hour or 2 of this treatment.
Both are suitable treatments for her condition. Most people in the world would get the suppository and oral fluids, or just oral fluids because we stay home and suck it up.
I recently ripped into a bunch of folks at the online forum of the local newspaper, who have an entitlement attitude and were complaining because they weren’t seen right away or immediately treated for non-life-threatening illnesses/injuries they went to the local ER for. I have family members who work in emergency care (a critical care EMS and an ER R.N.), and a close family friend is the director of nursing at the local hospital. Thre’s always room for improvement in quality of care (thus continuing education and policy & procedure reviews) but I know they are doing the best they can in an imperfect and broken health care system.
Aww man, I was so disappointed when I found out that the tire part was untrue. Dammmit!
I was just forced to admit two 20 something adults for overnight obs for hangovers. I kid you not. Hospital policy is we take all admits called from the ER. These were not detox admits and the vital signs were rock solid. Ridiculous.