Int Med

On my third day of internal medicine I called for a Child Life consult. I know what you are thinking. I have gone off the deep end. No really, hear me out. Do you know what all my adult patients do all day……….NOTHING. They sit in front of their TVs and lay in bed. While we preach to them about lifestyle changes we promote coach potatoes. Now mind you some of them are really, really sick but those aside, I find the philosophy maddening. There is not as much as a newspaper laying around the adult floors. Occasionally a volunteer will come by with magazines but it’s a once a week occasion.

Furthermore, when people want to get up its not really encouraged, I had a wonderful little old lady who came in with chest pain which was eventually ruled to be non-cardiac. I mentioned to my resident that she walked at her nursing home with a walker and used a wheelchair to get around if we were afraid of fall risk. She had asked for these things. He shrugged and said her yeah she could ambulate. Two days more laying in bed, she had cellulitis and a cough. We sent her home a week later having not left her bed in two weeks in worse shape than when she got there with a PICC line and a lot of Vancomycin. And I really did throw up my hands in the privacy of a bathroom stall and be like DARN INTERNISTs, stop thinking just about the freaking medical problems with people, start thinking about people with medical problems.