Stethoscopes, (aka guessing tubes), or just scopes. Some of us wear them in our pockets or on our hips in nifty little holster thingies that we bought at that last conference.
But most of us wear them around our necks.
Thats how I roll. Its just so…..well, medical.
But the problem is that the ear pieces are just like two hooks hanging down across your chest. They remind me of those ‘grabber claws’ in the arcade games where you try to pick up a stuffed Bart Simpson doll from a pile of tightly stuffed toys.
Only the stetho-hook is no game of chance. It will grab the most unlikely object at the most improbable time.
Here are a few examples of common stetho-hook snagups (I am sure you can add more from your own repertoire):
Scrubs centrifugal spindrift Two nurses walking past each other at high speed. Stethoscope of one nurse snags in the arm hole of the others scrubs propelling both into a 180 degree spin and sending them both back along their original trajectories.
Extra rare: Nurses continue on original trajectories. Instead, stethoscope flips across, seamlessly transferring from one nurses neck to the other.
Tearoom liftoff: You are sitting down next to your colleague for lunch. You get up to grab yourself a brew. Your scope snags the scrub top of your colleague lifting it up over their head.
Extra rare: well the tearoom liftoff is extra rare in itself.
How often do you and a colleague get to go to lunch at the same time?
Monkeys in a Barrel. when you and one of your colleagues have been leaning in close to the patient, you both go to straighten up only to find you are linked together by your stethoscopes. Just like the children’s game, monkeys in a barrel.
Extra rare: the triple link-up. Nurse-doctor-nurse
Stainless steel slingshot: You are helping the patient move up the bed. As they lean back, their oxygen mask elastic snags on your scope only to release the mask like a slingshot to the face as they reach the fully recumbent position.
Extra rare: Mask stays in place, stethoscope slingshots off you neck and into patients face.
Trepanation touchdown: Unbeknown to you, earpieces fall off stethoscope whilst you are being violently shaken by an intoxicated patient. As you finally manage to listen to his breath sounds, the uncapped ends, slice their way up your ear canals hooking against each side of your amygdala, not unlike a claw on a Bart Simpson doll.
Police Peel-off: you are pulled over for speeding on your way home (basically, because your bladder is pressing down on the accelerator).
You think you might be able to get out of a ticket when the cop sees the stethoscope you have strategically left around you neck in case of just such an event.
But the scope snagged against the car door frame as you got in, got jammed in the door, and hooked a large traffic cone as you drove out of the hospital, dragging it up the street beside you.
Extra rare: cop notes you are a nurse anyway and lets you off.
My favorite stethoscope snafu occured as I was helping an elderly lady up off the bedside commode. My grabber claw (earpeice) got caught on the arm of the commode, unbeknowst to me. Of course, as I stood up with the patient, my stethscope sling-shotted itself right off my neck and into the commode and its contents. After getting a new one, I quit wearing it around my neck and just put in the pocket of my scrubs. Lesson learned!
As an aside about stethoscopes as an accessory: I was recently in a cafe and a young local GP was in there with his stethoscope on. It was a 10 minute walk from the nearest health care facility. I wonder how long it would have taken to put it on the desk before he went out?
I don’t know if the situation is the same in Australia, but here in Canada, very few doctors or nurses would leave their stethoscope unattended on a desk in a hospital. The chances of it getting stolen are rather high – they’re expensive! The basic good quality stethoscope I had to buy for nursing school cost $112 CAD ($108.5 AUD). I don’t know if it’s because some people don’t bring their stethoscopes to work, so they depend on borrowing a stethoscope, and don’t remember to bring it back, or if it’s outright thievery. But we learn quickly to never leave our stethoscopes sitting out somewhere!
In response to the main article, we were also taught in nursing school to not carry our stethoscopes around our necks. For the reasons you so eloquently described, Ian, and also because they tend to swing annoyingly or dangerously close to a patient’s face when you bend over to talk to them or examine them, and finally because the sweat or oil (I forget which, I think it was oil) produced by your skin breaks down the stethoscope tubing over time when it’s in prolonged contact with your neck. A good stethoscope cover may prevent that (while making the stethoscope harder to clean, interfering with infection control), but the other two reasons are good enough for me. I know it’s not always possible or even logical to apply everything you’ve learned in nursing school to the “real world”, but I find the large pocket on the lateral thigh of my scrubs works well for holding my stethoscope.
As a victim of a unilateral trepanation-touchdown, I am quite glad that you are bringing this silent menace to the forefront of medical discussion. There’s nothing like having a colleague inform you that there is a trickle of blood flowing from your ear and then being forced to explain how your own stupidity led this self-inflicted injury.
More recently I’ve been having problems with the upgraded scrub pants I purchased, which in addition to being infinitely better fitting, also feature a zipper-fly whose covering flap INSISTS on catching the bed railing of every room I walk into. It makes for wonderful first impressions as I unceremoniously wiggle my hips and manually release my crotch in front of both the patient and their family.
You just made me snot a little bit on my cold lasagne from laughing so hard, you really are the best I sincerely hope you know that!!
I have many a time got my Stethescope caught in the cots sides of bub/ toddlers. I still do it and it will still happen. No damage…Just say “”: Whoops ” and giggle each time as its so repetative
But one story stays with me forever.
I was working in Saudi Arabia and our “”Head Sister ” who was a staunch over retirement aged Scot had the key to the door of Riyadh, so you can imagine where her loyalties lay.
She did not like “Äustralian Nurses ” because we were too brash and defiant as her words to me were. Her dislike was obvious at all times…and she had her favourite “Wee Lassie” from Scotland just graduated …quite amusing to watch really.
One day she bellowed down the corridor to me ” Nurse Bates take that Stethescope from around yer neck. You are NOT in Australia NOW!!” ( I really had to restrain my giggles )
I continued to wear my stethescope round my neck, and I continued to get told to take it off…although she was wearing out more than I
I smiled then, and I smile now, because maybe , just maybe that is why we are where we are now in Victoria, Professional, Strong, Proud and RESPECTED and why UK including Scotland is in the dire straits is finds itself in today.