Story time no. 9

So I need to vent just a hint, ok? Ok.

Tuesday I worked in MRI. There was an ICU patient that needed an MRI of a few areas, after a trauma. No big deal, we do ICU patients all the time.

I do what I normally do, I first look through the chart and then I call and speak to the nurse to see if it is safe to bring the patient down.

The patient is freshly extubated, off sedation, agitated, already pulling out lines, and non-English speaking.

Let us take a moment to remember: this is MRI. You have to be able to hold still for 20 minutes or more so the images are readable. MRI’s typically take a long time. The scans they have ordered for this patient add up to about an hour… An hour that the patient will need to hold still…

Nah, this one shouldn’t be coming down here. Nurse knows this. I know this. Doctors don’t seem to understand this. They want to “give it a try”.

So, this poor nurse packs up the patient, gets all the way down to us and as we make eye contact we both know this is a complete waste of time. The patient is in restraints and quite unhappy about this trip.

I don’t see this going well.

We decide we are going to give it the old college try and attempt to move him to the MRI table.

Oh, this ain’t happening!

The patient starts kicking and trying to remove everything as we attempt to move them over. Needless to say, the MRI tech decided it wasn’t safe.

All of this… The nurse and MRI had to go through all of this because the doctors just don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around the fact that the nurse knows her patient well enough to know what will and won’t work.

Irritating to say the least… Why waste the time of the nurse and the radiology department when we all know damn well this wasn’t going to work?!