It's good that you're accepting of things like this - working in a hospital and having two nurses in my immediate family, I see more clearly how overworked they can be at times, and I'm honestly surprised incidents like this happen as little as they do. I remember when I went in for a surgery, a newly-qualified nurse was tasked with putting the catheter in my hand and had a rough time of it - I said she was welcome to dig around til she found a vein, and she got it on the third try. I like to think I'm a giver.
Stupid Nurse :D
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It's good that you're accepting of things like this - working in a hospital and having two nurses in my immediate family, I see more clearly how overworked they can be at times, and I'm honestly surprised incidents like this happen as little as they do. I remember when I went in for a surgery, a newly-qualified nurse was tasked with putting the catheter in my hand and had a rough time of it - I said she was welcome to dig around til she found a vein, and she got it on the third try. I like to think I'm a giver.
I work at the Royal Liverpool and we still call it U&E.
Aah, but you don't do U&E, do you? You do creatinine with a GFR, which is a much more accurate assessment of kidney function
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Aah, but you don't do U&E, do you? You do creatinine with a GFR, which is a much more accurate assessment of kidney function
We do the old U&E with the Creatinine and eGFR added, keeps the old Docs happy I guess.
On the platforms we use, urea's nearly 30p per shot, so they don't get it unless they specifically ask for it. It's the same reason we don't do protein on LFTs - most of the tests are pretty irrelevant for each case anyway, doctors just like sticking to what they've always done. We've got a consultant down in A&E who can diagnose any problem by looking at a patient's blood glucose, it seems.
I'm guessing you work in a lab too, then?
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I can't work out why there's a question mark at the end of that.
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God damn lab monkeys not giving me my UEs when I want them, and now I can't even get an ESR! I liked ESRs, you could always rely on them to come back positive, never knew what that meant but a positive result always impressed the patients
God damn lab monkeys not giving me my UEs when I want them, and now I can't even get an ESR! I liked ESRs, you could always rely on them to come back positive, never knew what that meant but a positive result always impressed the patients
Pfft, ESRs and osmolalities (expluding water depravation tests) are the most useless tests - I can't understand why they're still offered. Who gives a crap whether your red cells settle 21mm or 22mm over the course of an hour? It gives no indication of anything being wrong unless the blood clots through the citrate anticoagulant
Edit: and that's senior lab monkey to you! One of the best parts of my job is that I get to tell doctors that they're idiots when they screw up
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I've had countless amounts of blood taken over the years - so many times my arms are scarred and the nurses sometimes notice that I'm a veteran.
If you think three times is a lot you've been wrapped up in cotton wool. Man up and grow up. What's a few pricks between friends?
Anyway, worst "Help, I'm a massive wimp but wanna blame it on someone else" thred
If you think three times is a lot you've been wrapped up in cotton wool. Man up and grow up. What's a few pricks between friends?
Anyway, worst "Help, I'm a massive wimp but wanna blame it on someone else" thred
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Do most doctors ask for it then? I assume that they would, since Urea is one of the prime indicators of dehydration or acute renal failue. eGFR is not an especially helpful test, it cannot be used to aid dose modifications of drugs in renal impairment for instance. We usually do U&E's plus eGFR (doctors love it for some reason). I always just calculate the GFR myself and go from there.
I am not a lab technician, but a clinical pharmacist working in oncology and medicine.
Oh and OP - walk into any hospital, look at a room of patients that are ill, then ask yourself how significant 3 little holes in your arm are
G.
The test in the internal systems is listed as E&Cr, so the doctors in the hospital get their first hint there. If needed, most will add urea separately, Biomedical journals all seem to agree that creatinine gives a more accurate calculation of GFR than urea, including cases of AKI or CRF, but renal (the bane of my life, I swear) mostly use a prefedined profile on their patient requests, which includes urea as well as things like phosphate and calcium. The doctors, GPs & older nurses still ask for U&E results when they phone up, and they're rarely surprised when they get creatinine instead of urea, and the handwritten forms nearly always request U&E still.
I didn't realise people still manually calculated eGFR, though. Ours is all automated on the interface between the analysers and the database we use. Do you manually correct calciums too?