Friday, October 26, 2007

Musants

Musants are musings and rants. I just made that up.

From time to time I come up with great ideas, and while dealing with a resident (they sometimes shuffle through the ED on a rotation) I came up with this idea. We have dummies and test manikins for everything from intubation to breast exams to CPR. But with today's technology, we could produce the following, with the help of the Disney imagineers, which would give the new resident a quick overview of the ED in a short period of time, and help them learn how to deal with a typical patient.


1. Grumpy old man manikin that continuously tries to fall out of bed, and wants a more comfortable pillow.


2. GI bleed manikin, that continuously spews foul fake stool all over the bed and floor, all the while yelling "you're killing me, you're killing me"


3. 18 year old girl manikin that reeks of alcohol, vomits xanax pills, and curses about the boyfriend who just "doesn't realize what he has thrown away"


4. Old man #2 manikin, that doesn't speak at all, except for saying "you tell him momma" when you ask about his history.


5. Young female manikin that continuously rubs her entire abdomen, discharging fake pus between her rubber legs repeating " there's no way I could be pregnant".


As an aside this is for you prospective "clients", also known as patients: It's not a spider bite, that cold won't "turn into pneumonia", you don't need antibiotics for your cold, there are 200 individual products over the counter for your symptoms, if you smoke two packs a day you don't have "asthma", and for the last time I don't care what you ate at Luby's two weeks ago (unless you ate arsenic), and finally, you didn't "just move into town" if I look in the records and your were here 6 times over the past 4 months.



Now I feel better.

11 comments:

  1. 8 year old boy (or girl) manikin in desparate need of spanking, throwing stuff around room, with one overwhrought parent manikin in room saying "i don't know what's wrong... he's taking all his ritalin and cymbalta???"

    security guard manikin with feet up on desk watching tv.

    manikin with head poked into nurses and doctor's area repeating "how much longer?"

    dude, when you start the company let me know. i'm in.

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  2. So nice to get things off your chest, huh? People get on my nerves too. We should be able to use your manikins in nusring school as I was in a culture shock once i got into a real hospital with real patients. I remember being amazed that there are THAT many crazy people on this planet!

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  3. 911

    I love the additions. My idea is really to have a faux ED, kind of like the military has a faux iraqi city in which new grunts train. Each room would have a different patient manikin, a la Westworld (we return to Westworld) in which the resident would get a taste, and smell, of many different encounters. I think if we set this up and ran it for all the EM residents we would make a killing.

    CAT

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  4. Think you could get one(or 2)manikins of the "2 dudes"????

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  5. CAT--

    You forgot the manikin whose accessories include a triage that states "10/10 abdominal pain," a cell phone glued to its ear, and orange cheeto dust on its fingers and around its mouth.

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  6. You crack me up.

    (And what would really be funny for the fake "dummies" would be TV commercials like those they do for the car-crash dummies----only these would be of ER scenes, heh...)

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  7. For the ER residents, how about a manikin that screams every time you touch it, assess it, or try to do a procedure (including anything minor like an IV start or a finger-stick)? If you touch it too long, it smacks your forearm.

    This manikin comes with a white wig to make it an Alzheimer's patient or greasy, dark hair with optional staph-infected facial lesions to make it a drug seeker.

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  8. I am currently working on the first prototype, a small doll representing an infant who has been vomiting "all day" and "cain't hold nothing down". The infant drool and smiles and coos and urinates all over the place. Comes complete with stupid parent with blue tooth headset.

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  9. brilliant post. very true to life, unfortunately.
    recently i heard someone coin the phrase compassion fatigue. so true for almost everyone in healthcare at some stage or another.

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  10. Cool post. Good to see we RTs aren't the only ones with a sense of humor.

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  11. props to go in faux rooms...

    'two beers' = six pack of king cobra 40s

    'two dudes' (gotcha oldfart) = one scrawny dude with gun and crack vials in pocket

    'a huge spider' = nothing

    'pit bull' = chihuahua

    'a little pot' = kilo of sinsemilla

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