People frequently ask me if I like being nurse - it's difficult to put into words the difference between my career as an account and nursing. One of the big differences is the amount of humor that I find in nursing. A prime example...
As nurses, not only do we do a physical assessment of our patients at least once a shift (lung sounds, heart tones, amount of edema, etc..), we also perform psychological assessments. A basic psych assessment evaluates if the patient is alert and oriented to person, place and time. Typically, you can ask the patient 3 questions - What's your name/birthdate? Do you know where you are? and Do you know today's date? Sometimes that last questions is asked in different ways (heck, sometimes I don't know today's date)... I'll ask them if they know who the president is... Some of my favorite answers...
Person/Birthdate:
"Don't you know who I am?"
"I was born in 1923... you do the math and tell me how old I am." (BTW - a clever way of a patient avoiding the question about the current date)
Place:
"When in doubt, Bethesda North." (Obviously, this person had been asked this question many times and still wasn't sure where he was.) I had to sit down in the patient's room I was laughing so hard.
"It says right there on the board 'Bethesda North Hospital', chief. Is that really where I am?!"
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