Sorry I’ve been “off the grid” this week. Upcoming diary post about why …
The drip that keeps dripping. Cases of gonorrhea up 25% in England in the past year – up 61% among homosexual males and young heterosexuals. New cases totaled just under 21,000 last year. Many of those cases were drug resistant. According to the article, it seems like chlamydia should be the larger concern. There were 186,000 new cases of chlamydia in England last year.
People in the comments section to the article think there is some biblical meaning to the uptick in STDs and compare current society to the Roman empire. Yyyyyyyeah.
The attack of the zombies. First, it’s a naked man … in Florida … who was shot and killed by police after he was found eating the face off of another man. The police ordered the man to stop and he looked up at them with blood on his face and growled.
Then porn star allegedly kills man and mails body parts to different Canadian political party headquarters.
Now a college student and former ROTC member in Maryland has been arrested for eating the brain and heart of the roommate he murdered.
If you work in an emergency department and don’t have tears of laughter streaming down your face after watching this, there’s something wrong with you. Toronto Emergency RN, thanks for making my day.
Another unfortunate soul without a means of transportation steals an ambulance out of an emergency department ambulance bay, then drunk drives it around town before crashing it into a parked car.
Take the keys with you when you drop off patients, all you bamblance people. It’s not like these brainiacs are committing grand theft auto by hotwiring the vehicles.
Jury awards estate of married man with two children total of $5 million when cardiologist fails to warn him not to engage in activity after the man sought evaluation for chest pains. The patient died one day before having his scheduled stress test. The jury’s award was decreased to $3 million due to the patient’s contributory negligence … he died while having sex in a threesome with another man and a woman who was not his wife.
Growing trend. Before getting medical treatment to patients, more doctors are requiring that patients sign an arbitration agreement. Some agreements limit recovery for non-economic damages to $250,000. Plaintiff’s attorneys are not happy about it, but courts are upholding the agreements when they are challenged.
California economics professor and Cato Institute adjunct scholar advocates increasing liability in medical malpractice cases so that society can sue its way to better health care. Increasing liability to improve performance … good idea. I propose that we begin by creating a new tort with limitless caps for economics professors who publish uninformed articles.
I can so relate to the hitler/ER charge nurse thing…it is so true. In fact that may have been me Tuesday afternoon.
Thought you would enjoy this malpractice story:
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2012/may/31/family-awarded-3-million-in-mans-sex-death/
The economics professor did not propose increasing liability. The liability exists. He proposed removing damage caps, which do not have anything to do with “better health care”, but rather “more profitable insurers”.
From the article:
“Critics of the legal system point out that many cases of negligence are not reported or adjudicated. However, every review has found claims are concentrated among a very small subset of physicians; less than five percent of physicians are responsible for the overwhelming share of claims. Even if a large percentage of negligent actions are not reported, it would seem that the present system works in identifying physicians whose practice patterns put patients at risk.
For the system to work to reduce practice risk, malpractice premiums must be experience rated — physicians who exhibit risky behaviors must face higher malpractice insurance premiums than their less-risky peers. The conventional wisdom among health policy experts has been that experience rating does not occur. But this is not true: high-risk physicians pay up to 500% more for insurance than their less-risky peers.”
Now, we can debate all day whether that small percentage of physicians really are being screwed, but either way, do you really want those with multiple paid claims in your risk pool?
Thanks for posting the Hitler charge nurse and for the subsequent laughs. I do love medical humor.
Watched it 4 times so far and posted in FB and my blog.
HILARIOUS!
The “Clap” article is not funny, but made me laugh. In Army days, the PA would come to me in the Lab and with gloved hand, produce a slide for me to stain…He almost walked away, but turned and said, “There is no doubt, Smoke,(my nickname)that this guy has got the (holds hands up and claps) CLAP!”
Texas had a state law that required us to report all STD’s and to notify all sexual partners. Needless to say, it caused a few divorces.
I personally loved giving that nice, cold shot of penicillin followed by the benemid. It was a silent form of humilitaion for all of them, but it never stopped the behaviors. We even tried giving them a class before going to the field to no avail. On average, if the unit was gone longer than a week, within a day of return to garrison, we saw no fewer than 6 guys and gals. Pretty bad for a small ancillary clinic!