Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Medics are from Mars...

Transcript of a recent conversation with a patient:

"Do you have any chest pain?"

"No. Not pain as such. It just hurts." 

"Have you ever had any heart problems?"

"No. Never. Had a heart attack once, but never any problems." 

"When was the last time you had an ECG?" 

"An ECG? I've never had one. But they did check my heart last month with all those sticky labels on my chest." 

"Have you ever had palpitations?" 

"Never. Every so often I feel like my heart wants to jump out my chest, though." 

"Any other medical conditions?"

"No, no. Take medicine for blood pressure and diabetes, but no medical conditions." 

Patients are from Venus. Well, some of them, anyway. 

11 comments:

Lil Pingu said...

hehe... thats one daft patient you got there!

jen said...

thats just how they answer the questions on the phone aswell

Anonymous said...

Sounds very familiar. One of my other favourites is "what medication do you take?" "the little white pills"

Torge said...

Venus okay, but which galaxy?

Firefighter/Paramedic said...

Hahaha!!! I love it. I've had the patient that says they have no medical history but then produces a paper with over 30 medications (no exaggeration, I counted) listed on it that they are currently taking.

Josh Minor said...

Isn't it just Jen! My favourites include "No he's not awake, he's screaming in pain" or "No he's not awake, he's gone to bed. He doesn't want me to call" - usually during a call about some one who is "unconscious" because they have had too much to drink...

InsomniacMedic said...

Thanks all for commenting! Any other examples of flummoxing conversations welcomed :)

Anonymous said...

My favourite is when you go to get a pain score (give it a score out of 10 - 0 is no pain, 10 is the worse pain in the world, rolling around the floor in agony) - sitting quite happily on the cot with no obvious discomfort and the smallest wound in the world - oh, I think its definately a 10, its really painful!

RD said...

Awesome sauce.

My favorite:

"When was the last time you use heroin?"

"Not in a long time!"

"How long ago was that?

"Couple hours."

Nicki said...

Ma'am, does your husband have a DNR?

"What's that?"

Did he ever sign a do not resuscitate order stating that he does not want any life-saving measures?

"No, never."

I begin CPR. I insert an airway, bag the patient, and we deliver 3 shocks to the patient. As we are doing compressions, the wife yells at me and the crew,

"What are you doing? He didn't want any of this! He signed a paper!!"

Dan said...

This is just like talking to my mum on ANY subject!