Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Show him the BaRF!

Medicine is full of rating scales. This is a new one to me.

It's used to ask kids how nauseous they are. And it is, I swear, called the Baxter Retching Faces (or BaRF) scale.


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34 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 5, 2011 at 8:18 AM

    Makes commenting easier.

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  2. AnonymousJuly 5, 2011 at 8:31 AM

    where did you find it?

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  3. Sarah GlennJuly 5, 2011 at 8:34 AM

    I imagine there's no need to ask the kid if he's having a 10.

    Great Scott! The word verification is 'hymen'. Really.

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  4. Thomas D.July 5, 2011 at 8:47 AM

    I'll admit that I thought you were making this up until I googled it. The things you see when you haven't got your gun...

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  5. SandraJuly 5, 2011 at 9:41 AM

    That's awesome. I wonder if pediatricians actually use it.

    BTW, it's nauseous, not nauseas.

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  6. Grumpy, M.D.July 5, 2011 at 9:43 AM

    You're correct. I fixed it.

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  7. thatsitJuly 5, 2011 at 9:51 AM

    Printing out to use at home....wait..how useless, both the spawn go from I'm fine to hurling so this wouldn't matter. :(

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  8. AnonymousJuly 5, 2011 at 10:11 AM

    Folks in my family usually have a scale of two faces, 'I feel yucky' or 'Get me the bucket'.

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  9. AnonymousJuly 5, 2011 at 10:20 AM

    BARF scale for kids on a BRAT diet

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  10. Knot TellingJuly 5, 2011 at 10:37 AM

    I agree with Sarah Glenn. Number 10 seems singularly useless.

    Also, what age kids are we talking about? Can you see a 7 or 8 year old deciding between 6 and 8? Heck! I'm not sure I could make that distinction.

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  11. MackJuly 5, 2011 at 10:43 AM

    ..maybe they should get it filled by stupid moms instead !

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  12. JessJuly 5, 2011 at 10:48 AM

    If you print it out, cut out each face and thumb through the pile, you get a nifty "moving picture" to while away the time.

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  13. AnonymousJuly 5, 2011 at 10:49 AM

    When I was a VERY young Army officer in the very LATE 1970's, I was involved with a research concept (as a participant only) which attempted to address the difficulty of females urinating in a field environment. (As the old whip-it-out and find a tree was remarkably useless for those of us with two X chromosomes.)

    A urinal with a special adapter was built, with the goal of us being able to pee standing up like the boys.

    It didn't work, so the name never made it out of the lab prototype stage...which is great, or someone would have been stuck replacing the name of the "FEMALE Urinary Collection Kit" wherever it was printed or displayed in its usual military acronym form....

    Pattie, RN

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  14. Grumpy, M.D.July 5, 2011 at 10:53 AM

    Pattie- that device would give a new meaning to "Go FUCK yourself."

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  15. ERPJuly 5, 2011 at 12:11 PM

    Actually it's "nauseated". "Nauseous" means causing nausea or sickening. So, if a kid is nauseous, he or she is liable to be emitting some nasty vapours.

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  16. Smiley :)July 5, 2011 at 1:02 PM

    @ ERP:
    FYI: You have it backwards.

    NAUSEOUS is an adjective meaning affected with nausea (to feel sick)
    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nauseous

    NAUSEATE is a verb meaning to affect with nausea (to sicken)
    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nauseate

    Grumpy was right. Just saying...

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  17. MooseJuly 5, 2011 at 1:04 PM

    Years ago I was working on a research project to develop some software that... well, nevermind. We needed a better way to restrict who could use various parts of the software, so one weekend one of the industrious programmers wrote up a module to do it. He called it, "Brian's Access Restriction Facility."

    Management was not amused, saying that we could not distribute code which would require us to tell people to adjust their BARF settings.

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  18. ERPJuly 5, 2011 at 1:08 PM

    Well Smiley, I looked it up and it seems like we're both sort of right.
    http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nau1.htm

    Seems like traditionally ( the way I learned it) , nauseated is the right word but due to us typically grammatically challenged Americans, the usage of "nauseous" has become so widespread as to be now also technically correct. I think it sounds dumb personally.

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  19. AnonymousJuly 5, 2011 at 2:55 PM

    no need to ask the kid when he's experiencing a ten ;)

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  20. Andrew_M_GarlandJuly 5, 2011 at 3:26 PM

    The barf scale should be foods (or almost foods), not faces.

    I'll leave it up to the imagination, or someone with artistic ability.

    But, here is a start

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-gunnison/a-case-for-the-completely-unfashionable-english-breakfast_b_838728.html

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  21. Frantic PharmacistJuly 5, 2011 at 5:11 PM

    That's awful that you would have to point to #10 in mid-barf.

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  22. Horace S. PatootJuly 5, 2011 at 5:32 PM

    This belongs next to the Bristol stool chart.

    If nauseate means "to cause nausea", then nauseated means "having received nausia." I was strictly taught that "nauseous" only meant "causing nausea" but I just now learned better, after reading an essay at Motivated Grammar (google "motivated grammar nauseous" and pick the first link). I learned something.

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  23. The ObserverJuly 5, 2011 at 9:15 PM

    Is it my imagination or does the puke in #10 have a little face drawn in it?

    @Pattie, RN: There are people in the world still working on this--I found them accidentally during a google search.

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  24. bogartJuly 5, 2011 at 11:55 PM

    I feel compelled to point you to http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html , in case you haven't seen it. Also, Haha! I'm not wearing any pants!

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  25. CJuly 6, 2011 at 3:14 AM

    not having watched children vomit lately (lucky me), #10 looks as if the child ate a wash cloth and has partly digested it. sorry to be such an art critic. maybe this is more useful with kids who cannot speak for a reason other than mere youth....

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  26. Treasure HuntressJuly 6, 2011 at 3:19 AM

    http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html


    Best pain scale ever! My favorite is #10: I am actively being mauled by a bear.

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  27. AnonymousJuly 6, 2011 at 8:48 AM

    @Pattie, RN and The Observer: At least a half dozen companies (and probably more) have done it and are selling it. Some reusable plastic or silicon, other disposable cardboard. One brand is marketed/endorsed for women with vulvar cancer.

    And I'm pretty sure I saw paper versions in travel magazines years ago so women didn't have to sit on questionable toilets.

    The military shouldn't have given up.

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  28. AnonymousJuly 6, 2011 at 1:35 PM

    #10 looks like the barf is barfing. That's how you know you're really sick!

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  29. AnonymousJuly 6, 2011 at 1:55 PM

    Is that the scale one experiences when finding out how much device manufacturers pay spinal surgeons?

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  30. kate sweetenJuly 8, 2011 at 1:13 PM

    Do they really need an option for "10"? It seems to me that if they're yaking everywhere, you're probably going to know about it already :)

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  31. AnonymousJuly 10, 2011 at 8:25 PM

    So if he hands the card back to you and it is covered in vomit, that's a 10, right?

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  32. woolywomanJuly 11, 2011 at 12:56 AM

    It works great. We use it where I work, and as a result give out more zofran and less basins.

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  33. MiraJuly 11, 2011 at 5:23 PM

    Oh man, for the last 15+ years I always get stuck at 8. I HATE that sweaty, icky feeling right before you yak. >_< Of course, for some odd reason I don't throw up, so I just stay feeling icky. Bleh.

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  34. AnonymousJuly 28, 2011 at 11:06 AM

    My last name is Baxter. I'm a new nurse.

    I already get teased fairly often for Meow-Mix commercials, the dog from Anchorman, and the medical supply company of the same name.

    Now I have something new to add to my last-name repetoire!

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So wadda you think?