Monday, September 20, 2010

Your Health Care Professionals





~this blog post deals with nursing students. i've met great nurses in my life, but i'm afraid of what's coming up.~


i've been trying to get into nursing school for a while now. currently, i am finishing up the recommended prerequisites and hope to be a licensed CNA before applying. though i was slated to take the CNA courses this semester, a family situation occurred, and let's just say my family comes first, and i need to be available to deal with things as they happen.

so even though i'm no longer in the CNA courses, i'm still trying to get through the other recommended courses. in particular, medical terminology.

from the beginning, i've predicted this course would be a cakewalk.* not only am i good at learning other languages (just not speaking them, n'est-ce pas, madame marissael?), but i was previously employed as a medical biller. in order to do this, i took a course at the local adult school that included rigorous medical terminology training.

i walked in on the first day of my course, and quickly discovered that many of my classmates, probably around 95 percent, are nursing students who are within one semester of getting their R.N. but i didn't let it intimidate me! (yes, i did. i'm totally lying. these people are where i want to BE.)

as nursing students, they had not only come prepared with the books and scantrons etc. on the first day, which is unheard of**, they had also done the first chapter's homework from the back of the book. many were talking about how they had also loaded the cd rom and practiced a bit before class on their laptops.

slowly and methodically, the teacher began going over terms. i didn't have my book, so i sat back and took notes as we went, trying not to look like such a n00b.

teacher: if hema means blood, and ologist is someone who specializes in a particular field of study, then a hematologist is...

girl next to me: someone who studies tomatoes!

me: what the hell?

total truth: this chick was serious. she really thought a hematologist studied tomatoes. she wasn't joking or being a smart ass. this chick was a medical assistant who was one semester away from graduating.

maybe it was a fluke, though.

teacher: if someone had an ovarian cyst, the specialist they would see would be:

dude in back of the class: A NEUROLOGIST!

me: oh, for the love of...

a neurologist? a NEUROLOGIST?!

teacher: what is the best place, in terms of accessibility and pain for the patient, to get blood?

girl across the room: the neck!

me: *facepalm*

i, meanwhile, was at this point just sitting back with my arms crossed, saying the correct answers (not to toot my own horn***) and just taking in all the stupid.

teacher: i'll give you a hint - only certain people have ovaries. who has ovaries?

guy in back of the class: males!

me: *headdesk*

also, these people also believe that if you have a deep neck laceration, you have to tie a tourniquet around the neck to stop the bleeding. because, hell, who needs to breathe?

also? an ectopic pregnancy can totally be carried out in the fallopian tube. and radio techs can diagnose and treat things they see in x-rays.

yowza.

i'm just saying, you might not want to go to the hospitals, if you can avoid it, judging by the people who are soon to be in charge of your health and well-being.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


*-cakewalks are not, contrary to popular belief, easy. they are tricky and deceitful and i almost never win a cake which is a huge huge tragedy.

**-truly unheard of. generally, at community college, if we show up with a pencil, we're an A student. usually we just have a shirt and maybe some pants and a donut.

***-i'm completely tooting my own horn here. toot toot toot, motherfuckers.





or give him death. personally, i'd choose death...