Med Glossary - Part 3
"I can't walk"
To me, when a patient says "I can't walk," he means that he cannot physically ambulate. Not necessarily. He might mean, in increasing order of likelihood:
1) I'm too weak to walk, and I really cannot even get out of bed. (10%)
2) My _______ (back, knee, hip, stomach, head) hurts so much that I don't want to walk. If I can just get a pain shot and some vicodin ES, I'll walk right out of here. (15%)
3) I just walked three miles from the bus stop to get a refill on my vicodin for my neuropathy. Now that it's after midnight and the buses aren't running, I need a cab voucher. And some crackers. (20%)
4) I'm so weak/dizzy that I don't really want to walk, but I can in fact ambulate with encouragement. (25%)
5) I'm too depressed to get out of bed. I have a long litany of woe and lots of non-physiological somatic complaints I'd like to tell you about. Where should I start, doctor? (30%)
6) I want a work excuse. (100%)
To me, when a patient says "I can't walk," he means that he cannot physically ambulate. Not necessarily. He might mean, in increasing order of likelihood:
1) I'm too weak to walk, and I really cannot even get out of bed. (10%)
2) My _______ (back, knee, hip, stomach, head) hurts so much that I don't want to walk. If I can just get a pain shot and some vicodin ES, I'll walk right out of here. (15%)
3) I just walked three miles from the bus stop to get a refill on my vicodin for my neuropathy. Now that it's after midnight and the buses aren't running, I need a cab voucher. And some crackers. (20%)
4) I'm so weak/dizzy that I don't really want to walk, but I can in fact ambulate with encouragement. (25%)
5) I'm too depressed to get out of bed. I have a long litany of woe and lots of non-physiological somatic complaints I'd like to tell you about. Where should I start, doctor? (30%)
6) I want a work excuse. (100%)
posted by scalpel at 12:34 PM
4 Comments:
OMG! You are so funny. For years i thought it was just me that had these thoughts. I want a set of stamps for triage, 'wants work excuse' is one of them.
Do you treat ANYBODY who doesn't want a work excuse?
We had a patient in the ED whose chief complaint was that he couldn't walk. The triage nurse put him low down on the priority for being examined. It turned out that he had a spinal cord AVM that had ruptured suddenly. The hours we lost in treating him rapidly always make me think twice when someone says they can't walk. We can't ever let our guard down...
Scalpel, you seriously need to work on your math skills. Tsk tsk. Even someone who failed math 3 years in a row (yours truly), can see that you're way over 100% with your given factors. :( /joking.
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