Waiting Room Ramblings

For the past week I've been busy taking my kid around through the healthcare system to attend to a sports injury he sustained. We went from Primary MD's office to E.R. to Trauma Surgeon's office.
All has turned out well and the injury is almost gone.

It's a tired topic, but I exasperatedly endured the terrible communication and disharmoniousness of healthcare as I was made to fill out the same information four or five times and an x-ray was repeated because the first one couldn't be retrieved after-hours.

It's sad that my iPod uses better technology than our healthcare system. It's like walking into any office back in 1995 with a dozen different information systems added on pell-mell and which can't communicate with each other.

It's 2006. Hello Moto, indeed!


Anyhow, one interesting thing about the experience was being on the other side of the fence and watching various healthcare people doing their jobs. I never mentioned to anyone that I'm an RN. Some people explained things in great detail to us and others gave barely a clue. Some people did shoddy physical assessments and others thorough. Some people were idiots and others spot-on.

One thing I was reminded of was how much I don't want to work in the E.R. We sat in there for 4 hours listening to a man on one side who had decided to get drunk in the middle of the day and participate in some boxing. They spent an hour keeping him tied down while suctioning blood out of his skull and throat. Finally, they intubated him and sent him off to surgery for a reason I didn't catch.
And in the hallway were two people sitting on gurneys awaiting to be shipped off to the psych ward for suicidal ideations. They sat there the entire time, laughing and joking and talking nonchalantly about being suicidal. I sure hope my tax dollars provide them with warm comfy beds and delicious food.

Seriously, can I line-item veto where my tax dollars go?

Wha...? Line-item veto of tax dollar use? Did I just stumble onto something absolutely brilliant?!







Now here it is, your url of the day:
New York Subway Smell Map