A Lighter View
Commentary From the Editor:

White Chocolate Mochas and Other Compensation—Antidotes for a Yucky Day
Certainly, emergency medicine is a heroic profession. Emergency nurses help to save lives every day. You care for the sick, the wounded, the uninsured and the dying. You provide solace to patients and their families, dispense medication, start IV drips and multitask as if you had the tentacles of an octopus. But you don’t.

Emergency nursing also is a profession often overflowing with the yuck factor. You know what I mean: The patient with food poisoning spewing projectile vomit like an un-exorcized Linda Blair (from the film, The Exorcist) and the patient defecating on your shoes. And then there is the homeless patient described by ED physician and Internet blogger SHADOWFAX:

“I have a lot of experience taking care of homeless people. It's part of the job. I am very familiar with the obligate squalor that comes with living on the street and the attendant lack of hygiene. This guy was beyond the pale. It's very hard to explain the degree of filth this guy had. His several layers of clothes were all encrusted with God knows how many years of bodily fluids, old beer, vomitus, and general dirt. His long hair stood straight out from his head as if he had received an electric shock, and his beard was matted and fouled with small bits of food. The smell was horrible, and I was grateful that his presenting complaint did not require a more intimate examination. I was in and out of that room in no time flat.

“…I noticed that he had these little white bits of food in his beard, but also in his hair, which I thought odd. On closer examination, I realized that the little white bits were moving. They were bugs, though the type I cannot identify. Some were big and had wings, so they were not lice or maggots or fleas. Some were clearly lice. There were lots of them, lots and lots of bugs crawling all through his hair and in and out of his clothes.

“As I left the room I jokingly commented that he needed a ’stat delousing.’”

“Not long after, I noticed his nurse and a tech standing outside the door putting on protective gear. Lots of it. Gowns, hairnets, scrub pants over their work pants, masks, face shields, gloves. What we call the ’full body condom.’ They went into the room and they stripped the patient naked. Disposing of his clothes, they shaved off his beard and all his hair, and scrubbed him head to toe with soap and lots of water. They covered his body with whatever medicated anti-lice lotion the hospital happened to stock, and they fitted him with new, clean and warm clothing from the donation box.

“I was in awe. The ‘yuck factor’ of this patient was off the scale, even viewed at a distance, and they spent an hour or more cleaning and delousing him, all on their own initiative. What they had to endure to accomplish that task was beyond my intestinal fortitude.

“When finally they were done, I made it a point to express my admiration and gratitude in the most direct way I could—I went down to the hospital Starbuck's and bought them their favorite drinks (white chocolate mochas). And I wrote an e-mail to the hospital CEO and Chief Nursing Officer, praising their dedication to duty. Just incredible. Nurses rock.”

You certainly have earned your stripes in the ED with this or a similar yuck experience. Maybe no one handed you a mocha or a blue ribbon or even gestured with an appreciative nod. But you can go to Starbuck’s yourself and order your own favorite latte. You can extend one of your multitasking tentacles around yourself in a gentle hug or spend a few minutes meditating on HGTV (Home and Garden TV channel) cleanliness and order.

Remember, you really rock. And you deserve compensation. Don’t wait to be recognized by others, for they also are multitasking their way through the day. Just do it for yourself.