I don’t know if the hospital cafeteria is to blame, or perhaps its the high stress levels, or a flare up of sun-spot activity, but we have some heinous issues with flatus percolating throughout the ED right now.
Just the other morning a senior doctor *trod on a duck* right in the middle of a handover huddle. Actually he trod on 2 ducks and tap danced his way down a line of ducklings.
I had no sooner finished handover than I heard nurse Iain *bust a grumpy* in the vicinity of bed 4.
Later that day I walked into some sort of organo-phosphorus green mist expunged by Nurse Shawn in the Resus room and shortly after that, someone, and I strongly suspect it was Deb, had *opened their lunchbox* behind the triage desk.
People. Someone is going to get hurt here!
It’s because of you that my children now know about “stepping on a duck” and get a huge laugh out of it.
My poor son tripped over a whole flock of ‘em in chorus class a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, he hasn’t lived that one down yet. At least he was in time with the music!
[...] I am probably leaving myself open here to the very sobering possibility that all the comments so far have in fact been left by Iain and Shawn and Deb as payback for this. Bugger. [...]
[...] So I guess that leaves it up to *us* to be agents of change. And to make sure we take a break from talking about puppies and farts from time to time to discuss as a community, some of the biggest challenges to face us as professionals and the impact it is having on those we profess to care for. [...]
Oneday I had one to let rip. Looking for a quiet place I headed to the storeroom. A quick scan, nobody present and I let rip, picked the nose and had a good scratch.
“G’day ..” someone had been present the whole time hiding in the shadows.
A red face doesn’t look cool.
Thanks for puttin a smile on this nursing students face……. what an awesome site all!
One e.r. Nurse I worked with related a story which took place when she worked in an icu [she was always talking about the exaulted experience of "pinching a load", anyway]:
She was one-on-one in a separate room with a patient who was comatose and had had some abdominal surgery, so had an n-g tube in. The Nurse related to us that she’d just had a giant meal of lasanga, and things were starting to rumble deep within. So she let flee a big fart, since the room was closed off and she felt safe. Even the patient wouldn’t notice.
But suddenly the Surgeon walked in and proceeded to pretended to think it was the patient who was now passing gas, so that the n-g tube could be removed. This prompted the Nurse to have to confess, after a brief agonizing moral struggle, that it was she who was responsible for the gas, not the patient.
Then the Surgeon told her that, yes, he already knew that. This Nurse could really turn red when embarrassed, so the Surgeon knew exactly how she felt. Then she went off to “pinch a load”.
I used to rip ‘em off all the time, but in a camouflaged manner. Once another Nurse asked me, “Do you smell food cooking?” She was getting hungry.
So many of the people I work with are true “buffalo soldiers” who carry on, so focused on their life-saving tasks, that the mere passing of gaseous volumes bears no witness save that of the duck laid thusly unconscious.
Talk about “gamey”!
Ian! Your descriptions of anything and everything are soooo fantastically lifelike and funny! You had me in stitches with the “trodding on ducks” imagery. This is one of my favorite blogs; I aspire to be an ER nurse in the near future and hope I can balance work, life and laughs the way you share with us how to
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Maybe you hadn’t noticed Ian but farting in front of bed 4 has been part of my schedule for almost 2 years