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TeresahRN
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Being a nurse is an exercise in dealing with unending streams of urgent situations and near crises while having to make just as many snap decisions. Helpful and humorous, this guide from the wildly popular Head Nurse Jo breaks down the various specialist personalities to help you determine which doc to turn to (or avoid) when you’re in the next big jam.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Internal Medicine
Fit, well-dressed, with a cholesterol of 130 and the oddest prescribing habits you’ve ever seen. If you need electrolytes repleted or your INR brought to its proper level (that’s a measure of clotting time that’s influenced by Coumadin), the internal med specialist is your gal. Or guy. If you’re a nurse, having an internal med consult means that you’ll be cutting tablets into quarters and giving 7.5 mg of something that comes in a 25 mg dosage, but only on alternate Thursdays during the dark of the moon.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Neurosurgery
Brilliant, with a necessary arrogance. Would you want somebody suffering pangs of self-doubt while his fingers are in your brain? Didn’t think so. Usually underfed and underslept. Will eat anything that’s moving slowly or standing still. Very nice people overall, since they have to deal with people who can’t talk, walk or make a lot of sense.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Neurology
Sweet, but from Mars. Odd sense of humor. Usually strange facial hair (on the men, not the women). Sometimes they have a fascination with Bach or zebras or rowing. Older neurologists tend to be courtly in the extreme and wear bow ties.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Orthopedics
The jocks of the medical world. They are carpenters and craftsmen—and I mean that as praise. A good orthopedist working on your hip will leave you with the equivalent of really good Art Deco woodwork: functional and beautiful, with nothing extra added. If you see a muscular young man or woman of few words striding down the hallway with a tiny box containing magnifying eyeglasses in his or her hand, that’s your orthopedist.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Cardiothoracic Surgery
I do not work with any of those folks and so have no clue what they’re like.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Plastic Surgery
Artistic, with the emotional lability that comes with artistry. I’m personally uncomfortable with plastic surgeons, as I wonder if they’re casting a covetous eye on my double chin.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Urology
How much does that suck? Proctologists are probably the only people with a more misunderstood specialty. Urologists, however, have the benefit of access to the scariest-looking pieces of medical equipment in the entire hospital.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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General Surgery
If you see a resident asleep in a chair at the nurses’ station, chances are it’s a general surgery resident. They’re horribly underslept, but have a solid working knowledge of where everything ought to go in the body. If you’re a general surgeon, you can take people apart and put them back together with no bits left over. I’ve gotten speech from a few of them that’s beyond “mmmmrrrppphhhh” as I wake them up, but not many.
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Endocrinology
Your average endocrinologist has a second brain somewhere in his body, in which he stores minute bits of important information that came from some obscure study in Backobeyondistan five years ago. They will speak to you as equals, even if their conversation about a complex patient eventually sounds to you like “Grobble grobblescrink mmmmREEEE! ppphhhhbt!”
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TeresahRN
26693 posts
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Psychiatry
Well-dressed, with a fondness for expensive shoes and dangling pendants (men and women, respectively). Pleasant, but strange. Psych nurses are nice as well, but strange. You have to be a little odd to work psych and be good at it.
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