Divemedic

Accommodations, Certifications, and Standards

A diploma, whether it is for high school, medical school, or barber college, is a certification from the school that issued it. That diploma states that the school is certifying that the person thereupon named has met the standards for that diploma. Or have they?

Nowadays, that isn’t what a diploma means. It was decided years ago, with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that it was unfair and discriminatory to treat students with intellectual disabilities (what used to be referred to as retarded) the same as other students. So this law was passed to make things more equitable. (Not equal, which is the same standard, but equitable, meaning that they have the same outcome.)

In order to make students with disabilities more likely to have the same outcome, they are granted accommodations. These accommodations can vary. It can mean that they are granted extra time, or are allowed to test in a private room with no one watching them, or that they are even give multiple choice tests with one or more of the wrong choices eliminated. Furthermore, the law goes on to say that there can be no mention of the accommodations on the student’s transcript, diploma, or other certifications. Don’t want them having the stigma of people thinking they had it easier than other students, you see.

As a result, not every student is being evaluated by the same standard. This means that a diploma is no longer a certification, as there is no guarantee that two students who have received that diploma were measured against the same yardstick. Remember that next time you are having your hair cut or being treated by a healthcare professional.

There was a student in my nursing class who received the accommodation of testing in a private room, and was also allowed to have her cell phone in the room with her. She graduated with a 94% test average, the highest in the class. I wonder why. No one on staff could challenge her on it, or she would scream about IDEA and racial discrimination.

The same happened when I was a teacher. All a student needed was a letter from a physician, saying that a student had a learning disability, and the student got all kinds of accommodations. There were some families who had 4 or 5 kids, all with extensive accommodations. It’s the newest way to get your kid that high GPA they’ve always wanted.

It doesn’t just extend to the classroom. Even licensing exams are given with accommodations. The implications are obvious. Your doctor or nurse might be wholly unable to provide you with competent care, but at least we didn’t hurt their feelings by making them seem inadequate.

This also makes licensure and the certification that goes with it wholly worthless.

By Divemedic, ago

If the Test Were Valid…

A group of 25 people were caught forging transcripts from shuttered south Florida nursing schools. They were using the forged transcripts in a scheme to show eligibility to sit for nursing licensing exams.

I’m torn on this. If the exam were a valid measure of the knowledge and skills of the nursing profession, then why does it matter whether or not you went to a nursing school? Alternatively, if passing grades in the school were a reliable indicator of proficiency, then why have a licensing exam?

This is simply a continuation of our licensing discussion. The transcript is a certification- the school is certifying that you are proficient. With that being the case, why require an exam? Are you saying that the school’s certification isn’t reliable? Or is it the exam that isn’t reliable?

Or is this simply a money making scheme that allows colleges, testing centers, and the state to rake in thousands of dollars from each nursing candidate?

There are nursing schools that charge upwards of $50,000 for an associate’s in nursing. Many nursing programs have completion rates that are below 50 percent. That is, less than half of the nursing students who begin the program actually complete it. On top of that, less than 60 percent of those who complete nursing programs in south Florida actually pass their certification exams. That means less than a third of students who begin nursing education in south Florida wind up becoming nurses.

My own nursing school had a 45 percent completion rate and a 90 percent exam pass rate. That works out to about 40 percent, and doesn’t include those students who began the prerequisites but were never admitted to the school.

That’s why there is such a nursing shortage. For every 100 students who begin the nursing pipeline, only about 25 of them actually become nurses.

By Divemedic, ago

Changes are Coming

My wife’s job is moving. She will be working about 30 minutes farther away from the house than she is now. She wants to move closer to her new work location. I have been working on changing hospitals. If I want to do that, it would be easier if we move. If we move about 30 minutes south of where we are now, it would put us closer to my wife’s work and would make it easier for me to find a new hospital.

So we have been looking at houses. We had a few must haves, and some wants.

  • We want a one story house.
  • We need at least three bedrooms and three baths. This is so we have room to care for an aging parent if it comes to that, plus room for a guest.
  • I would like natural gas service
  • We would like a pool.
  • We need more storage space. Either a bonus room, a large garage, or room to build a storage structure on the property.

So we began looking.

The first community we looked at wanted $400k for a 2000 square foot house. Hidden costs included a $45,000 bond. A bond is an invention here in Florida that requires each owner of a residential property to pay for roads, fire stations, and other infrastructure costs that are not part of the property. In other words, it is a cost of building a neighborhood that is passed on from the builder to the buyers of the homes. This raised the cost of the house to $455k, or about $225 a square foot.

The second and third builders did not have houses and floor plans that we liked. We went to a late lunch out in the country. While we were there, I happened to see a nearby community that looked interesting, so we headed out there. They had 2950 square foot home plan that they think we can get built with custom options for $525k, and no bond. That brings the cost to $178 a square foot. Admittedly, it’s at the upper limit of what we wanted to spend, but it’s a really nice house with a large kitchen. The best part is that it is within a 30 minute drive of 5 different hospitals, which gives me a lot of flexibility in changing hospitals. It’s one of those small Florida towns that only have a population of about 2,000 people, but still have stuff nearby.

The only real catch is the current lead time for construction is 12 months, meaning that we will be in late 2023 or early 2024 before we can move. We are looking at all of the numbers and facts, but we will likely be paying earnest money within a week or two. That means when the school year starts next fall, my wife will have to commute a bit. It also means that I can start looking for new work, expecting to start somewhere in July or August. There is a hospital that is only 15 minutes from the house we are looking at that is a good place to work and is offering a $10,000 bonus to work there. By all reports, the pay is good and I hear lots of good things about them. There are other hospitals that offer larger bonuses, but there is a reason for that.

So change is coming. It will be easier working where I am, knowing that my days there are numbered.

By Divemedic, ago

The Ballot Box is Gone

The battle for the nation’s electorate is over, and the statists have won. How did they do it? By realizing that it isn’t VOTERS that are required to win elections, nor is it VOTES. No, what is required to win elections is BALLOTS. The Republicans still can’t grasp this, and are spending all of their time and efforts in trying to make sure that one person gets one vote.

That’s so old fashioned and last decade.

With their hold on the nation’s governor’s offices firmly established, having added control of the state legislatures in both Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are going to keep changing election rules nationwide. Their wish list of proposals for 2023 includes expanding automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote, lowering the voting age to 16, granting the franchise to felons, and criminalizing anything that the left disagrees with as “disinformation.” Anyone who opposes these policies will be branded as a racist.

Look at what is happening here- by focusing on the harvesting of ballots instead of votes, the Democrats can get elected, even if and when their policies are unpopular. Automatic voter registration means that everyone is registered to vote, no questions asked. Couple that with automatic mail in balloting where each voter gets mailed a ballot, and you have millions of ballots going out to people who aren’t even aware that they are registered to vote. Why, there are ballots going out to registered voters who aren’t real, living people. Those ballots are being mailed to addresses that don’t even exist.

During the 2020 election, Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent out automatic voter registration forms to all eligible Michigan residents. As a result, 114,000 people were added to Michigan’s voter rolls, with many being fake registrations. By padding state voter rolls with new unlikely voters, Democrats can harvest those ballots and put their candidates over the top. There are 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are solely dedicated to this, and we know this because of the FTX scandal.

Don’t expect that to change in 2024. Republicans are playing a losing game akin to playing Monopoly against someone who is the banker and is willing to give themselves interest free loans from the bank. The ballot box is gone. There are laws coming that intend on destroying the soap box. There aren’t all that many boxes left.

By Divemedic, ago

Another Theory Shot to Hell

The theory is that armed police shouldn’t be dispatched to calls of violent people with mental health issues. Instead, unarmed mental health counselors should be sent, they claim.

Guess what? Ronald Mosely was under the care of court ordered mental health professionals when he decided to go to his former workplace with a gun in an attempt to kill two of his coworkers. Police had to smoke his ass.

Come to think of it, the majority of spree shooters have been under the care of mental health professionals.

As a medical professional, I think that mental health is not real science. It’s voodoo wishful thinking with fairy dust. I can’t tell you how many of these violent nutcases come into my hospital every week. I was attacked by one in December. He was delusional and thought I was trying to sleep with a female technician in the room, who he mistakenly believed was his wife.

In October, I had another patient who shit in a plastic urinal and threw his feces at me.

Just last week, we had a psych case go nuts and punch a doctor so hard that the doctor’s orbital bone was fractured and it caused bleeding in his brain.

On Friday night, I had a patient who was talking to someone who wasn’t there for over four hours (yeah, he was a nutcase). The doctor wouldn’t Baker Act him because, “Being an annoying asshole isn’t illegal and doesn’t make him a threat to others.” The doctor also wouldn’t discharge him without a drug test. The house supervisor (nurse in charge of the hospital) told me that I *had* to attempt to draw the patient’s blood so we could do the test. The patient told me that he had HIV, and said he would stick me with a needle tainted with his blood if I tried to start an IV on him. I told the charge nurse this, and she said I still had to try. That was when I told her that if she needed his blood so bad, she should be the one to draw it, because I wasn’t going to do it unless he was placed in restraints.

She didn’t do it, either.

There are only two ways to deal with anyone: you can reason with them, or you can use force. People with certain mental health conditions don’t reason or reach conclusions like normal people. They are broken. You can’t bargain with them, you can’t appeal to their better nature. Anyone who insists that this isn’t true is either lying to you for personal gain, or has no idea what they are talking about.

By Divemedic, ago

War on Drugs Killed Cold Medicine

Studies are showing that the most widely sold oral decongestant in the US doesn’t do anything, but we already knew that. The name of the drug is phenylephrine, and its sold as a key ingredient in things like NyQuil and other cold medicines.

When the Feds decided to stop people from making Meth, they needed to pull pseudoephedrine from the market, so they were looking for a replacement and settled on phenylephrine.

In the hospital, the intravenous version of phenylephrine is called “neo” by nurses. It’s found in nasal sprays like neo-synephrine, where it works pretty well. It’s a vasoconstrictor, meaning that it causes blood vessels to constrict, and it can be useful for increasing a patient’s blood pressure without affecting heart rate when given in an IV, and it shrinks sinus tissue when sprayed in the nose. When given orally, not so much.

It also doesn’t work worth a darn as a cold medicine. Anyone who has tried taking it knows that it doesn’t really work. If you want a true decongestant, you have to go to the pharmacy counter and hand over ID so your cold medicine can be registered. I guess that way, the cops can more effectively catch those who make meth.

Except meth is still widely available, but now I can’t breathe whenever I have a cold.

By Divemedic, ago

Snoozefest

The New Yorker Post is claiming that Florida is a “snoozefest” compared to New York.

I guess it is.

The truth is:

  • We aren’t all old.
  • Yes, we eat early down here. I usually eat dinner before 6.
  • No, we don’t have crocodiles, you moron. We have alligators. You must have learned that in your superior New York education you are bragging about.
  • We have hurricanes. So what? We aren’t pussies about it. Remember “Superstorm” Sandy? Yeah, that was a Category 1 storm. Pussies.
  • No, we don’t all sit around waiting for you to hand us money to drive your mother around.

On the other hand:

To the NY Post: please, please keep telling New Yorkers that Florida sucks. We don’t want your liberal asses and their votes down here. Stop trying to turn Florida into the southern annex of New York. We don’t care how you do things “up north” or even want to hear, “Well, up in New York, we…”

We don’t care, as long as you keep your liberal ideas, taxes, and votes up in New York, where they belong.

By Divemedic, ago

‘Teens’

An old man was being beaten on a New York subway car by a group of ‘teens.’ A local TV weather man, who was also on the train, told them to stop. The weatherman became the target of their beating instead. Since the arrested ‘teens’ were all juveniles, they were released without charges. Look at the man’s injuries:

Two black eyes, swollen face. A beating that causes injuries like this are frequently debilitating or even fatal. How can any society look at this as being some kind of lark or harmless crime? My wife keeps asking me why I won’t go to places like New York City or why most of the people I know view NYC as a cesspool. This is why. She counters with “stuff like this is rare. You just have to be careful about where you go.”

There is no way to know how rare this is, because there are no charges filed. Since there are no charges filed, crimes like this are likely not tracked. Misdemeanors and all. Just harmless fun committed by a bunch of ‘teens’ who weren’t doin nuthin.

By Divemedic, ago

Not a Theory

The nerds over at Wikipedia define a conspiracy theory as:

A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy by powerful and sinister groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. The term generally has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal of a conspiracy theory is based in prejudice, emotional conviction, or insufficient evidence.

A deeper dive into the Twitter files shows that the Federal government was sending so many requests for censorship to Twitter that the company was having to triage the requests. Twitter was receiving requests from more than 80 agencies- everyone from the DOD to the FBI.

This wasn’t a few rogue employees. This was a coordinated effort by hundreds of employees of dozens of federal agencies to influence the election. At this point, you can consider all branches of government to be suspect: Local and Federal agencies all working together to put their thumb on the scale.

There is more than enough evidence here to show that this was not just some conspiracy that exists only in the minds of paranoid wearers of tin foil hats. This did happen and is happening. Our nation is no longer a republic with democratically elected representatives.

By Divemedic, ago