268th reason my job can be annoying...

Another annoying thing about nursing... Picture this: Busy Friday night on a hot, sweltering June night in Santa Monica. I actually told someone that the only people coming into the ER are the very sick or the very stupid. Boy, was I right. In one room I have a elderly woman with severe dementia who had her leg ripped open while seated in some sort of chair that is supposed to keep her stayed put. In the next room, a girl who (we piece together) is telling her friends and family that she has a brain tumor. We do all sorts of tests and find out there is absolutely nothing wrong with her. A CAT scan of her head shows a perfectly normal 23 year old brain. Kinda what we thought in the first place. She specifically asked us not to reveal her test results to her friends. This STUPID girl is faking an illness while the woman in the next room needs our full attention. I'm more than pissed. I just wasted time on a silly game while I could have been assisting the actual sick person right next door.

I'm driven nuts by the "trolls", "malingerers", and hypochondriacs that waste all the staff's time when we could be focused on the actual sick people. Wonder why medical care and insurance is expensive? Blame these assholes...