I see and hear this all of the time…
Let me share a couple of stories from the past month.
The first is a man who came in complaining of abdominal pain. There are a lot of things that can cause abdominal pain, and coming in to the ED with that complaint guarantees that you will get an abdominal CT scan. In this guy’s case, he had an appendicitis. It was already inflamed and looked about to burst. The doctor admitted him to the hospital, and the surgeon was prepared to do the emergency surgery that evening. The man refused, saying he had a job interview that afternoon and couldn’t stay. He signed out against our medical advice.
He returned to the ED at 8am the next morning, said he was ready for the surgery, but only if we could get it done and have him out by noon. When it was explained to him that he would have to spend the night in the hospital, you guessed it, he said we were only doing that so we could make more money.
Then there was the guy who had an abscess and calcium deposit in the tip of his penis. He came to the ED for treatment. He wanted us to cut open his penis to drain the abscess and remove the calcium deposit. He explained that his urologist had refused to do it in the office and wanted to admit him to the hospital in order to perform the procedure. The ED doctor said, “If your urologist, who specializes in this sort of thing, won’t perform this surgery on an outpatient basis, what makes you think I will do it here in the ED?”
The man then looked at me and asked, “Can you just do it?” My response was “Uh, no. I’m a nurse, and I am not performing a surgical procedure on you.” He then said the magic words: “You are all doing this just to get more money out of me. I will just have my wife do it.” Then he stormed out.
Are we well paid for our high degree of knowledge? Of course we are. Have you tried to have a plumber come out and do anything? I wanted to put a sink and a water conditioner in my house. The plumbing company I called wanted $600 to hook up a sink or $900 to hook up a water conditioner. The difference is you don’t die of sepsis if you get the sink’s piping incorrect, and when the plumber gets it wrong, no one sues him for millions of dollars.
Oh, and here are a few things that have been cured by modern medicine:
- Hepatitis C
- Tuberculosis (TB)
- Syphilis
- Chlamydia and gonorrhea
- Trichomoniasis
- Stomach ulcers caused by H. pylori
- Cataracts
- Testicular cancer
- Smallpox
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