ER's Mom wrote this excellent post a few weeks ago, and I just have to reprint it here. But I take no credit for it. It will, however, be remarkably useful in my practice (and likely most others).
Levels of Crazy
Been thinking about this for awhile. I now have the "ER's Mom Official Guidelines for Assigning Levels of Crazy".
1. Normal. They exist, even constitute the majority of patients. They make poor blog fodder however, so you wouldn't know that that they even exist from reading any medical blog.
2. Crazy. These are the "fun crazy" folks. A little off, but you don't cringe when you see them on the schedule.
3. Bat-shit crazy. Your stomach drops a little when you see the name on the schedule.
4. Fucking Nuts. These folks seem intent on driving YOU nuts too.
5. Mouth agape and head shaking. You are lost for words upon meeting these folks. Fortunately, they are rare.
ER's mom: Please don't be offended I used this. It was just too good not to share.
11 comments:
Oh this is good! I think it applies for my day to day life, not just office time.
You know, like when you get to a wedding are looking for your name card to know what table to go to and you see THEIR NAME(S) on the list?
Maybe it's just me.
SO TRUE!
Yep. We run across these folks in the education field as well.
And Dr Harold Shipman had a very special way of dealing with at least 218 patients in levels 3 through 5.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman)
I read somewhere that it's a good rule of thumb that if you dislike a patient w/in the first 10 seconds of meeting them, they probably have a personality disorder. Some folks will just randomly start antagonizing right off the bat..."I put my light on and it took you a minute to get here...what were you doing, thinking about whether or not I was important enough for your precious time? This hospital is so awful, now gimme a blanket, I'm cold." Hi, my name is K, I'll be your nurse today...
Hey, thanks!
:)
Nurse K- it's actually 3 rules for talking to patients.
1. If you feel depressed, the patient is depressed.
2. If you are having fun, the patient is manic.
3. If you want to hit them, the patient has a personality disorder.
Call it a gift, but I can usually file every patient I have into one of these categories by the 2nd visit,,,sometimes the first visit. I'll either like or dislike them within the first 10 minutes or so, and my gut feeling has never let me astray.
It's frightening how well each and everyone of my patients fit into these categories. The insight is remarkable!
I prefer 'Nucking Futs' to 'Fucking Nuts'....it sounds quirkier!
This list also applies to computer/network users if you work as either tech support or as a sysadmin.
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