VIP

We had a VIP who, even though he was in the ICU, still didn't want to have his beauty sleep disturbed. The following was a message placed on his door:


DO NOT awaken patient between the hours of 11pm and 6am unless absolutely necessary.

Lab techs, nurses, and various personnel didn't know what to do with this and kept waking up the on-call resident to get direction. Keep in mind that, in the ICU, the nurses have to do hourly checks as part of their guidelines and regulations. Most of the night they were concerned about getting in trouble just to give someone their restful sleep.

Even better for me was the fact that this patient was a still practicing physician, but had no idea what his meds were for, and had to have everything explained to him plainly - akin to layman's terms. Watching this scene play out you realize how the CME requirements are a good thing - because there are people who're practicing medicine circa 1970's.