Monday, April 7, 2014

Seen in a hospital chart:




So, based on this detailed exam, we can assume which of the following:

The patient...

A. Is dead, and the doctor is in the morgue by mistake.

B. Has escaped, and left a mannequin in the bed.

C. Is a parrot.

D. Wait, how the hell is that part of a mental status exam?

E. The doctor billed this as a level 5 visit.


20 comments:

a.generic doc said...

F. The patient is a ghost.

G. The patient has joined the KKK.

ER's Mom said...

Wait...this is like the multiple choice at my med school, in which case the answer is:
A,D, AND E.

And no credit unless you got every thing. :(

Anonymous said...

Patient is member of the KKK

Noah said...

As a nurse, from time to time I've had patients (mostly elderly men) who would just pull the sheet over their heads and sleep like that; guessing that's probably what was going on here.

This does not exclude A, B, C, or E.

bluetoothbuddha said...

That mental state exam was a piece of sheet.

Officer Cynical said...

"Housekeeping!"

skidmark said...

1 - Was that sheet wet?
2 - Was that sheet tightly covering the patient?
3 - Does the patient have a history of being uncovered - as in inappropriately exposed?

4 - Is it bad that years of working with crazies made me see the note as generally unremarkable?

stay safe.

Anonymous said...

I think this was a test of the doctor's mental state.

He failed.

Jono said...

F. Patient is attempting self-mummification.

Loren Pechtel said...

Euphemism for being a KKKer?

Anonymous said...

Patient is attempting to conduct examination through the sheet. (That is, the patient has the crib sheet underneath and is reading the answers word for word for each test question.)

Anonymous said...

As in correcting the misunderstanding that it is the examiner that is usually under the sheet?

Anonymous said...

To heck with the physical exam, let's just go straight to the mental status exam which incidentally was held under the sheet.Being a particularly good quality sheet, at least 350 ct, the number of fingers held up test was deferred. However, the patient did pass the numbers counting back from 100 question and was able to recall the three words after 5 min. story question; the drawing exercise was a different matter and we did not provide the magic marker this time to actually write on the sheet.

pretzel said...

I presume an actual doctor (or possibly a NP or PA) wrote this, so this is better than my MA typing "wearing a hat" into the "General" portion of the exam.

Anonymous said...

A sheet of what?

Anonymous said...

Perhaps this was written by an illiterate who meant to write covered in shit. That's what it would mean if it was one of my patients' charts, I'm sure.

Struck by a Turtle said...

E! Billed a level 5 :)

RehabRN said...

Maybe the patient was covered by another kind of sheet. (bad pun...sorry.) Way too much "sheet" at the Hotel.

BTW I'd like to know when neurology started partnering with the cotton mills (mental status and sheets).

Too much fun here free associating.

Aren't coworkers fun?

Hal Dall, MD said...

C. It's a parrot

E's not dead, e's just sleeping!

Pierre said...

The patient is trick-or-treating disguised as a ghost. Asking for pills of course...

 
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