New Hospital Stuff

I spent yesterday at the Day Surgery center at Emanuel hospital waiting on a friend. Noticed a couple of things.

At first I thought the heated gowns were simply to make the patient more comfortable, but I found a note that said they were to help reduce the risk of infection. That sounds a little iffy to me, especially for an outpatient ward. But hey, big organizations like to have rules and procedures and if that makes them happy, then so be it.

There seemed to be a lot of procedures in place to make sure they had the right chart for the right patient, especially when they were administering narcotics. It soon got to be absurd, but we were only in recovery about 4 hours, and I think there were only about 4 doses of narcotics.

If you are in pain, they will give you 2 to 4 milligrams of morphine. It takes effect quicker but only lasts about 30 minutes. Vicodin tablets take longer to kick in (about 30 minutes) but last longer (about 4 hours). I'm wondering why that would be. Is it because it is absorbed slowly through stomach/intestine, or is it because it lasts longer once it is in the blood? If it's the later, then maybe there is something to all these fancy schmancy pain pill formulations. I had been of the opinion that it was just a scheme so the drug companies could charge an arm and a leg for narcotics which are actually dirt cheap to produce.

There's another thing that bothers me though and that is that they add Tylenol to all these narcotics, and I'm thinking why bother? I've never found Tylenol to be especially impressive. It will take care of minor pains, but they are usually something you can live with. They might not be pleasant but they aren't incapacitating. If something really hurts, Tylenol isn't going to help. Of course, I could be all wet. Tylenol has another problem that you don't hear much about.

The place seemed almost empty. Long halls. Every so often you would see a patient being wheeled down the hall in a bed or a wheel chair, and there was the occasional person walking somewhere, but all in all it was pretty quiet.