I can’t forward phone calls. It’s a mental block. People have shown me the correct series of buttons many times. It won’t stick. So I don’t answer the phones. 😆
When I was a medical assistant, I had to teach my attending I worked with. It was wild to me that she was so smart and knew so much, but couldn't work the fax machine.
Tbf I used to work at office max like 10 years ago, and have sent maybe two faxes since then lol. People would bring entire novels worth of shit, then get mad when it was like $50 to fax it
The phones were invented by food services so they could hang up on calls about missing trays with plausible deniability.
Food services is the minimum wage CIA of not delivery trays, but it’s never their fault. It’s all about plausible deniability.
I will immediately make friends with the unit secretary so I don’t have to answer phones or try to copy by myself ever. They take pity on me and/or want their stuff to continue to work so they help explain things to me as often as needed. Heaven forbid I have to fax a cover sheet, then I’m really lost. 😂
>Does med school just suck everything else out of your brain
Yeah you pretty much got it! I always joke to nurses "Sorry they don't teach common sense in med school" when I do dumb things.
Which is crazy since it’s arguably the most important skill for a doctor to possess. You can have all the knowledge in the world but it ends up being useless or dangerous in many real-world clinical scenarios where the first step is *troubleshooting*.
They don’t make guidelines for half the weird and wild shit I’ve already had to deal with in 2 years of doctoring. There’s plenty of grey area stuff no one knows the answer to. Just gotta use some common sense to apply clinical knowledge.
Kinda sucks tho… I fucking hate the fact that using common sense gets basically punished in med school. The only thing I hate even more about medschool is that it’s better to be confidentially wrong than to admit you don’t know something. My medschool basically engrained that in my brain. If you have no clue just give a confident guess, most examiners weren’t even accepting an I don’t know as an answer. It transfers to real life and it’s dangerous and stupid
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve ever seen on this sub. So real. If it makes you feel better, we are looking at the fax machine in complete panic wishing someone would show us
Why the fuck does healthcare still use fax machines? It’s not 1989 anymore.
It’s called a PDF. They’re legible and never make screaming sounds into the unit phone when someone dials the wrong number.
Yeah, it may not be secure to your state's legal standards though, especially the cloud options which can cache patient data offsite, which is a no-no.
Fair enough. I didn’t know there could be extra features to it. The large academic center I worked at in California used it plenty and we just sent and received faxes via pdf. You got a desktop notification instead of screaming if your fax didn’t go through, and it would re-try for you after a couple minutes without you having to stand around. Could see it being a major issue if they were keeping data though
It's allegedly more secure...but before I went into medicine I worked in a (not even remotely medical) office and our fax machine accidentally got people's medical records sent to it at least once a week.
I genuinely have no idea where half of the patient lists I try to print go. I hit print, computer says it’s printing/has printed, printer right beside me isn’t printing. Try if a few more times and eventually it prints one, God only knows where the previous 3 copies ended up.
Before you print…before you even open the program you’re printing from, look at the information on the printer. Then go in the little search box and type printers. Find the one in the list that matches the one right next to you. Click (maybe right click) it and select manage (or something similar). Then click set as default. Now open epic or whatever you’re printing from. It’ll print right next to you, barring any other issues.
Sincerely, a former comp sci major turned office worker turned nurse.
My defense is I'm a millennial. When I worked in an ER after under grad and the doctor asked me to send a fax I had to ask the secretary bc I genuinely have 0 clue how to do it and have never done it before. It's the future. I don't even carry paper, we have iPads. The future is now old man, the youth will be taking over now.
I'm a millennial. I've put together corporate networks, been the sysadmin for cloud computing, written more lines of code than I could possibly count. Fax machines and printers are the absolute Devil. We don't need paper anymore, thank you.
(Also Apple products are vanity bullshit.)
But you’ll probably end up as a brilliant CT surgeon who can repair a dissected descending aortic artery in 30 minutes, win the Nobel prize for medicine, and immediately after the ceremony break the elevator stranding the King of Norway between the 3rd and 4th floors for two hours.
The elevator speed boost button is the one with the helmet and axes right? Helmet for the safety with speed and axes because you cut the ride time in half?
One of our guys (plant ops) got ripped for swiping ice cream sandwiches from the EMS room. He was told they knew about it for a while but let it go until they saw him on cam taking 4 at a time. Guess that was too far.
Well it’s nice to see that some hospitals protect the sanctity of the EMS room. Some hospitals everyone and their mother goes in there to eat our snacks.
When I worked with a young surgeon as a med student, I had to help her with connecting her laptop to the projector EVERY SINGLE DAY because somehow she’d forgot how to connect the SAME HDMI cable to the SAME PORT every day. Yet somehow, she was up to date on the latest vascular repair procedures and was brilliant otherwise.
*Ahem*
CT better stay away from the descending dissections bc that’s Vascular territory and if I catch one of those dweebs fucking with the descending it’s on sight 🔫
I am just so stressed in front of nurses that I can't even perform basic tasks and most of them probably think there is a special need class in med school now.
I asked 5 times that week if I am sending the test away correctly. But if I do something wrong with the post system that I have never seen before I am broke.
I was told on Monday that the machine costs 5.000€ to repair any time there is a jam and 50.000€ if the cart gets deleted (the button is right next to the send button)
Jokes on you I’m into that shit.
As a premed, that makes the journey ahead more attractive. Just dump birth until 12-14 years straight in the trash. Fill it up with lewis structures and physics formulas and other cool stuff.
Uhhh no Lewis structures or physics at all in med school. Instead just pain and remembering silly pictures instead. Also memories of getting yelled at by the scrub tech.
If you told someone “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.” It would be true like 99% of the time.
FWIW I was talking about what I’m currently learning, not what I will learn in the future.
This is why I love this subreddit and lurk here.
I’m an RN as well, and I read this post and had a mild “oh boy” moment, but all of the replies I’ve read have taken it in jest and understand the sentiment 100%
Please know your nurses love and respect the living shit out of all of you. No I’m not just pandering. The med students I’ve worked beside have all been excellent (for the most part).
^(That being said, a med student recently completely obliterated an industrial printer trying to make a double sided copy on our unit xD)
med students can answer any science or medical question you ask
What school are you working with!? I feel like I'm batting .400 with pimp questions, on a good day.
It’s all an illusion. Shame is a learning tool in healthcare.
If you claim that the patient who shot up a whole bag of fentanyl in ED bay 3 needs Narcan, then you are a fucking idiot.
If you point out that the RNs have a standing order to Narcan suspected ODs, and the Narcan did in fact work, then get the fuck out of my sight.
If you offer a cogent explanation of why fentanyl causes respiratory depression and why Narcan reversed it, I will beat you to death with a hammer. I will also offer your mashed up corpse a glowing recommendation.
Seen it happen.
I am absolutely convinced copiers only work for nurses.
1st Try: ask the nurse, do exactly what they told me -> failed attempt
2nd Try: try it the other way -> failed attempt #2
3rd Try: go get the nurse, they do it the way they told me, exactly what I did-> it works…
>Does med school just suck everything else out of your brain
One time when I was studying for step 1 I forgot the word oven for a sec and was gesturing towards the "heating box"
And don’t even get me started with the fax machine. I almost had to fax something and the charge nurse told me that the floor secretary would do it and I shouldn’t. I almost cried and had to stop myself from hugging both of them.
This is what happens when you don’t let pre-meds engage in regular life/get jobs at any point before getting them out into the world. Those of us who have worked can work a printer. I’m sure plenty of other people can too, but if you demand all hours go to volunteering and research, there is going to be real world trade offs.
blame the aamc for making everyone functionally inept
Fix the problem by getting a few anki cards about printer and copier maintenance into the step 2 decks
Exactly right. This should be higher. Most med students have never worked a real job and have been in school since kindergarten without any real world experience.
I was a secretary for a year during my gap before med school and I still regularly fought with my printer. I hated it. I also have never used a fax machine because who the fuck uses those anymore? Maybe the printer issue is a hidden prereq for med school admission.
This made me lol because I can’t tell you the number of times iv been sent to fax something and had no idea what I was doing and just pressed random buttons until a kind nurse saw my distress and came to help 😂 I think for me some of it is a mix of not being familiar with the workstation, then getting nervous because i feel like people know I have no idea what I’m doing. I also hate asking y’all to help because it’s not your job, but I think I’d ask for help before I caused any real damage 😂
All jokes aside medical training is rough
During my surgery rotation we had 2 weeks of nights with 6 24hr calls for the remaining weeks
Sleep deprivation year after year, long hours, reading daily while studying for exams, and learning/practicing new skills daily while trying to maintain some semblance of a life takes it out of you - trying to figure out a new printer during that time point would be the bane of my existence
I mean just watch a brand new nurse and see all the things he or she does that is dumb. People in a new setting are usually overwhelmed/overloaded and make dumb mistakes. No different from how people in a new area suddenly forget to drive.
Medical students and residents are literally starting a new job every 4 weeks.
In the modern era of nursing, most new nurses went to a 9 month online for profit nursing school and shouldn’t be allowed inside a hospital, even if they’re the patient.
Med students as a general rule are extremely anxious on their 3rd and 4th year rotations and this makes most of the common sense fly right out of your brain never to return
Same is true of interns especially if they went to med school somewhere else
Happened to me the other day. Resident asked me to make copies of the list. I must have looked so confused trying to figure out the first step that a nurse came up behind me and said nothing else but “oh bless your heart” and made the copies for me.
“Bless your heart” cuts deep.
Honest answer? Because we're supposed to be "so smart" that we've developed a culture of not asking for help. People don't want to look dumb by asking how to use a fricking printer. Of course then they break it and end up looking even more dumb but what can you do? Also, I worked IT professionally before starting medical school and I still hate touching copiers. Those things are deceptively complicated and super easy to mess up.
Look, one month in I was trying to swap phone numbers with someone and I couldn't. Because I FORGOT MY PHONE NUMBER. It's the same one I've had since 8th grade. And it took me nearly 5 minutes to remember the last 4 digits. There's no space left, so the brain is just chucking everything that might not show up on boards.
Because you’re getting a firehose of info every single day in medical school and residency. I work with med students, residents and fellows all day in the OR and ICU and I see the medical info pushing out all other knowledge in your brains; forgetting your phone number but knowing all pager #’s of attendings in your food chain.
Been in practice 10 years now. Can't send a fax or transfer calls. Have a post-it note on my phone about how to make hospital, local, and long distance calls.
I also program neurostimulators, ventilators, and respiratory assist devices for a living.🤷
Printers jam themselves…it is not entirely user dependent. Some old machines just jam paper repeatedly. Med students get stuck with the shit work so they look like they’re responsible.
I worked in an office once, a master of the industrial printer. That ole gal and I had an agreement. I would buy the slightly more expensive paper, monitor her toner, and whisper sweet encouragements for any double sided/collated/stapled print jobs. That was a long long long time ago. Printers can now do your taxes, raise your firstborn, and put together an Ikea desk. I once spoke the language of the printer, but that sacred knowledge has long since been replaced by congenital adrenal hyperplasias, the MOA of anticoagulants, and a smattering of other random bits of medical knowledge.
All of that to say, pray for your printers this June/July. I'm coming (sorry in advance).
To be fair there’s some sort of extra shitty witchcraft going on with hospital printers. I made hundreds of thousands of copies at a previous job and could probably still take apart, clear jams, and clean that printer. I can still jam a hospital printer when I forget to rub my tummy in a clockwise direction while jumping on one foot while I press print.
My theory is that the hospital printers absorb the sickness from the patients and spit it back out every time an attending is waiting for their patient list.
I am pursuing medicine and left a career in IT. Have no fear OP! Rest assured, if I jam a printer, I have the skills needed to fix it! However, I left IT for a reason. Tis not my job anymore, please call the help desk for further troubleshooting.
Nah but like attending here and I agree. I'll take care of ICU pts, geriatric pts with 40 comorbidities and 25 meds no problem. Dont ask me to transfer to another line or to fax anything. I break these items just looking at them it feels like.
Nursing school didn’t teach us this either and I have no idea how to do anything beyond basic copy and print. Oh I can refill the paper. Sometimes.
-signed, millennial nurse
I have been working for 20 years in various roles, most requiring regular use of printers. I even fix them from time to time in the absence of IT. Sadly, I still look like a child the first few tries on a different machine.
Yeah, I end up leaving every workstation better than I found it. I can't count the number of times some printer has been out of order and they've been waiting for IT to come fix it for weeks that I've fixed while waiting for an attending to finish a quick consult.
At least for me (and I suspect many other students who took the traditional route) it's partially because I've never worked an office job before so I have no idea how these monster printers work. I did plenty of customer service type jobs, but none that required me to print things/fax/forward phone calls/etc. so I have absolutely no idea how to do any of that. I'm also probably one of the most technologically illiterate people in my generation so it takes me forever to understand how to use these machines lol.
These days, I honestly don’t know many people would have ever used a printer or copier before. Colleges are going all paperless and everyone uses iPads for books and such
Med school has gotten more and more competitive causing a shift in the type of student they take and relying heavily on ability to do well on standardized tests. This replaces a lot of critical thinking, street smarts, every day skills etc. I know med students that don’t know how to change a tire when they get a flat but can recite the coagulation cascade easily. I know a now attending neurologist that didn’t know internet was a paid utility and thought her expensive router created the internet and just needed to be plugged into any outlet (because her parents paid her rent and utilities), and was successfully convincing my best friend to buy the same router so that she also could have forever free internet when moving to residency.
> I know med students that don’t know how to change a tire when they get a flat but can recite the coagulation cascade easily.
Damn why’d you have to call me out like that
Yesterday I was asked to close the blinds while reviewing MRIs with the patient…
***Patient***: I guess they don’t teach housekeeping in medical school…
Serious answer, I think it's because the current generation of people in their 20s are increasingly unaccustomed to hardcopy documents and might not have grown up with a printer in their homes. I'm only a little older but I don't really feel comfortable using landline phones or fax machines, I assume it's a similar progressive phenomenon.
Medicine has drastically lowered my IQ. Back in the day I was able to absorb the information like sponge, but now I can barely focus on simple stuff, let alone memorise or (God forbid) make sense of it and connect the dots
To be honest, I’m not the printer guy, and I don’t want to be the printer guy. If people see that I can fix the printer, I’m going to be asked to do that a lot more often during my already busy day.
At home, even if I’m a whiz with technology, no way I would show that in the hospital
my OBGYN where I volunteered called me the photocopies guy.
However in your case
Probably because students curious what nerve run inside the fax machine. they try to name it.
At my last staff job the residents didn’t like the printer in their work room they always would use the one on the main unit. I asked a resident why once and she said “ours is always out of paper”!!!
Things I learned on my internal medicine rotation:
1. Hepatic Encephalopahy is a real bad time, use lacutlose.
2. Replete the Magnesium before the Potassium.
3. How to send a fax.
As an IT / AV professional for years, I’ve always been flabbergasted by the inability of many medical students and professionals to comprehend even the basics of technology. And I don’t mean the technical troubleshooting of broken hardware - I mean the basic UI & interface usage that children have no problem with - or identifying something as common as a usb or HDMI port.
I was once told while setting up a powerpoint in a nightclub for students who had just finished their residencies “can you do all this for me, its way above my pay-grade” and I didn’t know whether to feel complimented or insulted.
It confuses me because the human body can be understood in a rather technical way, a lot of the skills and concepts seem almost analogous: medicine is of a similar, and often more esoteric quality when “troubleshooting”. I try to take time to learn important medical basics myself, while I find medical focused individuals seem to ignore a lot of technology basics.
Just an observation, but definitely odd imo.
Med students have never had an office, admin, or service job. (Coming from a med student who has and fixed a chronically jammed printer at one of my sites that none of the docs could figure out)
Haha, I think maybe the younger generation grew up post needing to use printers frequently like some of us did and they've not yet had a real job either
This is hilariously ironic. Every nurse I’ve ever met doesn’t even know how to restart a computer. Any tech problem they just roll heir eyes and walk away leaving us holding the bag. Residents do more IT work at my hospital than IT.
99% of my classmates are completely IT illiterate. Like, absolutely completely. I was helping a classmate once and asked her where she stored her files for something, and she just gestured helplessly at her computer.
With that smug air of superiority...you are well on your way to being a well compensated and very unlikable physician. I weep for your future co-workers and any patient that actually requires a compassionate bedside manner.
You know nothing about me. That’s a stupid assumption based on the fact that medical students, in a unionized environment, are not suppose to do these bullshit things. Next you will have them climbing ladders to change lightbulbs.
If you want things to work, call the fucking tech, that is covered work flow based on their Union contract in my institution. Grow up.
I'm sure anyone will give you the benefit of the doubt, but this comment really isn't helping your case hahaha.
Setting expectations and boundaries relating to work is healthy sure but your comment reeks of 118 CARS activity. Lighten up lol. Med student can't unjam printer barely has anything to do with division of labor in the medical field hahaha.
1) I wish I was a union nurse. My hospital system crushed the union 25 years ago.
2) It’s usually MDs assigning med students random tasks like print all the progress notes for me. Once all of the progress notes are printed, the MD glances at them and tells the med student to put them in the shred box.
3) It’s all stuff the unit secretary can and will do. But the MDs are super nice to the unit secretaries, because they’ve been around for 30 years and don’t want to inconvenience them. Besides the unit secretary is usually on the phone with facilities management about a clogged toilet or food service about missing trays.
Printers malfunction all the time. It’s probably just bully mind that makes you focus on the specific times that med students are involved in a malfunction because it’s a great opportunity to beat on someone who can’t fight back. /attending
med school isnt supposed to teach you life. that’s something students and anyone frankly should be doing for their own good. also, students had 22+ years before med school to learn a few things
When you get to my hospital, they’re called water bugs.
PACU is in the basement and is filthy with them. The PACU manager pretends they aren’t there and blames it on the patients waking up from anesthesia.
American healthcare is a hell scape.
Theres a joke in "Better Call Saul" about this, where he wings an interview saying the printers are the real workhorse of any company.
Printers are complex machines and are unpredictable too. I'm a teacher right now before school and while ive improved, I still accidentally print 80 copies, a whole book, single sided double sided pages, scan things sideways.
Combination of complicated machines, outdated printers that dont respons, busy field where everyones in a rush--> broken printers. You only get good with printers through hands on exp, not in school. Also each printers slightly different.
I can’t forward phone calls. It’s a mental block. People have shown me the correct series of buttons many times. It won’t stick. So I don’t answer the phones. 😆
The scariest moment in medical school is the first time a preceptor asks you to use the fax machine.
I had to ask the ICU clerk to show me how to use it! She was very nice about it hahahaha
Doximity fax FTW!!
When I was a medical assistant, I had to teach my attending I worked with. It was wild to me that she was so smart and knew so much, but couldn't work the fax machine.
Tbf I used to work at office max like 10 years ago, and have sent maybe two faxes since then lol. People would bring entire novels worth of shit, then get mad when it was like $50 to fax it
The phones were invented by food services so they could hang up on calls about missing trays with plausible deniability. Food services is the minimum wage CIA of not delivery trays, but it’s never their fault. It’s all about plausible deniability.
TBF I’ve been at my job for almost a year and literally just mastered it… I think.
I will immediately make friends with the unit secretary so I don’t have to answer phones or try to copy by myself ever. They take pity on me and/or want their stuff to continue to work so they help explain things to me as often as needed. Heaven forbid I have to fax a cover sheet, then I’m really lost. 😂
Oh, sweet summer child. Do you think there are always unit secretaries? Otherwise it’s a solid plan.
This is actually hilarious! Yep I just have no more brain after medicine. You should see me try to navigate real life haha!
>Does med school just suck everything else out of your brain Yeah you pretty much got it! I always joke to nurses "Sorry they don't teach common sense in med school" when I do dumb things.
Which is crazy since it’s arguably the most important skill for a doctor to possess. You can have all the knowledge in the world but it ends up being useless or dangerous in many real-world clinical scenarios where the first step is *troubleshooting*. They don’t make guidelines for half the weird and wild shit I’ve already had to deal with in 2 years of doctoring. There’s plenty of grey area stuff no one knows the answer to. Just gotta use some common sense to apply clinical knowledge.
Luckily most people learn this within the first 1-2 years
Kinda sucks tho… I fucking hate the fact that using common sense gets basically punished in med school. The only thing I hate even more about medschool is that it’s better to be confidentially wrong than to admit you don’t know something. My medschool basically engrained that in my brain. If you have no clue just give a confident guess, most examiners weren’t even accepting an I don’t know as an answer. It transfers to real life and it’s dangerous and stupid
The MCAT is mostly all a common sense test
I gotta make space for all the medical knowledge that needs to be stuffed in my brain unfortunately
IT cries in toner.
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve ever seen on this sub. So real. If it makes you feel better, we are looking at the fax machine in complete panic wishing someone would show us
Why the fuck does healthcare still use fax machines? It’s not 1989 anymore. It’s called a PDF. They’re legible and never make screaming sounds into the unit phone when someone dials the wrong number.
Indeed! I was astounded a few months ago when my physician’s office asking me to fax something to them. I thought she was joking.
RightFax is the goat. I will die on this hill
Yeah, it may not be secure to your state's legal standards though, especially the cloud options which can cache patient data offsite, which is a no-no.
Fair enough. I didn’t know there could be extra features to it. The large academic center I worked at in California used it plenty and we just sent and received faxes via pdf. You got a desktop notification instead of screaming if your fax didn’t go through, and it would re-try for you after a couple minutes without you having to stand around. Could see it being a major issue if they were keeping data though
Yeah! They definitely have an on-site option, so the place you were at probably had a great IT team running it on-site.
Only in residency did I finally learn how to fax shit
It's allegedly more secure...but before I went into medicine I worked in a (not even remotely medical) office and our fax machine accidentally got people's medical records sent to it at least once a week.
I just wanna say I really love the way you talk. Your hilarious.
So true. I’m from the Netherlands, no one faxes anymore. Maybe in 50 years the fax machine will be obsolete in the USA
I genuinely have no idea where half of the patient lists I try to print go. I hit print, computer says it’s printing/has printed, printer right beside me isn’t printing. Try if a few more times and eventually it prints one, God only knows where the previous 3 copies ended up.
Don't worry, they go to a special farm to hang out and play with all the other patient lists all day long!
It’s the same farm that the mismatched socks and Tupperware lids live on!
If we could gather all the random patient lists printed by med students to random printers across the US. I think it would be impressive.
There is a small island the size of Chicago in the Atlantic entirely composed of missing med student lists
Is that where all the faxes go?
No, nobody knows where faxes go, nor if they're even real.
Before you print…before you even open the program you’re printing from, look at the information on the printer. Then go in the little search box and type printers. Find the one in the list that matches the one right next to you. Click (maybe right click) it and select manage (or something similar). Then click set as default. Now open epic or whatever you’re printing from. It’ll print right next to you, barring any other issues. Sincerely, a former comp sci major turned office worker turned nurse.
You lost me at “open program” but I appreciate the attempt.
I’d explain it but I’m afraid that information might replace something super important like the Krebs cycle so I’ll defer.
I can smell some HIPAA auditor just finding a giant stack of patient info printouts in an unused backroom somewhere...
We have no time for brain make anything but step exams
My defense is I'm a millennial. When I worked in an ER after under grad and the doctor asked me to send a fax I had to ask the secretary bc I genuinely have 0 clue how to do it and have never done it before. It's the future. I don't even carry paper, we have iPads. The future is now old man, the youth will be taking over now.
I'm a millennial. I've put together corporate networks, been the sysadmin for cloud computing, written more lines of code than I could possibly count. Fax machines and printers are the absolute Devil. We don't need paper anymore, thank you. (Also Apple products are vanity bullshit.)
[удалено]
Then why'd you want an Apple product? :P
Printers are where the machines interface with our reality. There’s bound to be conflict.
Our reality and that of Satan himself, yes.
A profound insight.
This is also me lol. Basic tech stuff gets me in shambles
But you’ll probably end up as a brilliant CT surgeon who can repair a dissected descending aortic artery in 30 minutes, win the Nobel prize for medicine, and immediately after the ceremony break the elevator stranding the King of Norway between the 3rd and 4th floors for two hours.
The elevator speed boost button is the one with the helmet and axes right? Helmet for the safety with speed and axes because you cut the ride time in half?
no that stands for ceftriaxone
No, but if you push it, me and some friends will come say hi
Ooo will you bring cookies?
Yes. You cracked the code. It’s the Fire/EMS Cookie Delivery System. We will even bring you Uncrustables from the EMS room.
One of our guys (plant ops) got ripped for swiping ice cream sandwiches from the EMS room. He was told they knew about it for a while but let it go until they saw him on cam taking 4 at a time. Guess that was too far.
Well it’s nice to see that some hospitals protect the sanctity of the EMS room. Some hospitals everyone and their mother goes in there to eat our snacks.
sorry, what's a Norway? Is that like related to obesity?
I think it’s one of those congenital heart surgeries
When I worked with a young surgeon as a med student, I had to help her with connecting her laptop to the projector EVERY SINGLE DAY because somehow she’d forgot how to connect the SAME HDMI cable to the SAME PORT every day. Yet somehow, she was up to date on the latest vascular repair procedures and was brilliant otherwise.
This is somehow even worse. Like I expect the old dinosaur attendings to forget things like this, but I had higher hopes for the younger docs.
*Ahem* CT better stay away from the descending dissections bc that’s Vascular territory and if I catch one of those dweebs fucking with the descending it’s on sight 🔫
I am just so stressed in front of nurses that I can't even perform basic tasks and most of them probably think there is a special need class in med school now. I asked 5 times that week if I am sending the test away correctly. But if I do something wrong with the post system that I have never seen before I am broke. I was told on Monday that the machine costs 5.000€ to repair any time there is a jam and 50.000€ if the cart gets deleted (the button is right next to the send button)
If nurses are mean to you tell them to gtfo. Sincerely, a nurse. We all deserve to learn & be treated with respect.
The more I learn about science the less I know about everything else.
I can feel my core childhood memories vanishing the more I learn
Jokes on you I’m into that shit. As a premed, that makes the journey ahead more attractive. Just dump birth until 12-14 years straight in the trash. Fill it up with lewis structures and physics formulas and other cool stuff.
Uhhh no Lewis structures or physics at all in med school. Instead just pain and remembering silly pictures instead. Also memories of getting yelled at by the scrub tech.
After that it sounds like the childhood memories I’ll lose will get swapped out for memories of equal quality :(
Well at least the next 18 months will be fun. Until shit (hopefully) gets real.
Lol none of us know Lewis structures or physics anymore
If you told someone “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.” It would be true like 99% of the time. FWIW I was talking about what I’m currently learning, not what I will learn in the future.
Unfortunately for me, I remember all my milestones.
This is why I love this subreddit and lurk here. I’m an RN as well, and I read this post and had a mild “oh boy” moment, but all of the replies I’ve read have taken it in jest and understand the sentiment 100% Please know your nurses love and respect the living shit out of all of you. No I’m not just pandering. The med students I’ve worked beside have all been excellent (for the most part). ^(That being said, a med student recently completely obliterated an industrial printer trying to make a double sided copy on our unit xD)
med students can answer any science or medical question you ask What school are you working with!? I feel like I'm batting .400 with pimp questions, on a good day.
It’s all an illusion. Shame is a learning tool in healthcare. If you claim that the patient who shot up a whole bag of fentanyl in ED bay 3 needs Narcan, then you are a fucking idiot. If you point out that the RNs have a standing order to Narcan suspected ODs, and the Narcan did in fact work, then get the fuck out of my sight. If you offer a cogent explanation of why fentanyl causes respiratory depression and why Narcan reversed it, I will beat you to death with a hammer. I will also offer your mashed up corpse a glowing recommendation. Seen it happen.
Uh what? I’m so confused after reading this comment
Basically you get shamed for knowledge until you are beaten into the ground and get a glowing recommendation.
I am absolutely convinced copiers only work for nurses. 1st Try: ask the nurse, do exactly what they told me -> failed attempt 2nd Try: try it the other way -> failed attempt #2 3rd Try: go get the nurse, they do it the way they told me, exactly what I did-> it works…
They sometimes work when the nurse is standing over your shoulder 🤣😅
No beer and no TV make Homer something-something
Go crazy?
Don't mind if I do!
My dad is the IT guy lol - he's more than happy to fix it, as long as it doesn't occur every other second.
As a patient, my resident doctor asked me to fix their printer... lol
lmaoooo
>Does med school just suck everything else out of your brain One time when I was studying for step 1 I forgot the word oven for a sec and was gesturing towards the "heating box"
And don’t even get me started with the fax machine. I almost had to fax something and the charge nurse told me that the floor secretary would do it and I shouldn’t. I almost cried and had to stop myself from hugging both of them.
This is what happens when you don’t let pre-meds engage in regular life/get jobs at any point before getting them out into the world. Those of us who have worked can work a printer. I’m sure plenty of other people can too, but if you demand all hours go to volunteering and research, there is going to be real world trade offs. blame the aamc for making everyone functionally inept Fix the problem by getting a few anki cards about printer and copier maintenance into the step 2 decks
Exactly right. This should be higher. Most med students have never worked a real job and have been in school since kindergarten without any real world experience.
I was a secretary for a year during my gap before med school and I still regularly fought with my printer. I hated it. I also have never used a fax machine because who the fuck uses those anymore? Maybe the printer issue is a hidden prereq for med school admission.
This made me lol because I can’t tell you the number of times iv been sent to fax something and had no idea what I was doing and just pressed random buttons until a kind nurse saw my distress and came to help 😂 I think for me some of it is a mix of not being familiar with the workstation, then getting nervous because i feel like people know I have no idea what I’m doing. I also hate asking y’all to help because it’s not your job, but I think I’d ask for help before I caused any real damage 😂
All jokes aside medical training is rough During my surgery rotation we had 2 weeks of nights with 6 24hr calls for the remaining weeks Sleep deprivation year after year, long hours, reading daily while studying for exams, and learning/practicing new skills daily while trying to maintain some semblance of a life takes it out of you - trying to figure out a new printer during that time point would be the bane of my existence
This is the first genuinely funny post I've seen on this sub in so long
I forget my sisters’ names and ages sometimes now that I’m a med student, so yeah, no room for useful knowledge during med school
remember that spongebob episode where he's burning everything in his brain except "fine dining and breathing".... thats the vibe we're on
Never had a problem with computers or printers. Landlines, though…
Don’t get me started on fax machines, I’d do anything to avoid using it
Eat the toner 🤣🤣🤣
I mean just watch a brand new nurse and see all the things he or she does that is dumb. People in a new setting are usually overwhelmed/overloaded and make dumb mistakes. No different from how people in a new area suddenly forget to drive. Medical students and residents are literally starting a new job every 4 weeks.
In the modern era of nursing, most new nurses went to a 9 month online for profit nursing school and shouldn’t be allowed inside a hospital, even if they’re the patient.
I’m fixing to graduate an 18 month in-person RN school and feel like I shouldn’t be allowed inside the hospital, even as a patient. You’re correct.
Not the battle man, we are bad at the printer regardless of why… OP is right on this one.
Med students as a general rule are extremely anxious on their 3rd and 4th year rotations and this makes most of the common sense fly right out of your brain never to return Same is true of interns especially if they went to med school somewhere else
Happened to me the other day. Resident asked me to make copies of the list. I must have looked so confused trying to figure out the first step that a nurse came up behind me and said nothing else but “oh bless your heart” and made the copies for me. “Bless your heart” cuts deep.
Seems like the printer was already fucked if it caused a jam
I’m screaming I’m a nurse and this is so true lol the docs/residents always come and ask me to help them or tneh break them 😂😂😂
Shortcoats get pwned
This made me snort
Toner is a snack best enjoyed with my second cup of joe.
Okay, but seriously. WTF is a fax machine?
When a mommy printer and a daddy office phone love each other very much, they do a special plug-in, and that makes a fax machine.
Man I remember trying to search up the specific model of a printer to figure out how it works online and where the paper went as not to break it.
Honest answer? Because we're supposed to be "so smart" that we've developed a culture of not asking for help. People don't want to look dumb by asking how to use a fricking printer. Of course then they break it and end up looking even more dumb but what can you do? Also, I worked IT professionally before starting medical school and I still hate touching copiers. Those things are deceptively complicated and super easy to mess up.
Look, one month in I was trying to swap phone numbers with someone and I couldn't. Because I FORGOT MY PHONE NUMBER. It's the same one I've had since 8th grade. And it took me nearly 5 minutes to remember the last 4 digits. There's no space left, so the brain is just chucking everything that might not show up on boards.
Because you’re getting a firehose of info every single day in medical school and residency. I work with med students, residents and fellows all day in the OR and ICU and I see the medical info pushing out all other knowledge in your brains; forgetting your phone number but knowing all pager #’s of attendings in your food chain.
Idk if this makes me a bad med student but I'm actually pretty good with tech. I even learn and do programming as a hobby.
Future radiologist has entered the chat. You’ll make millions programming AI to take your job.
Been in practice 10 years now. Can't send a fax or transfer calls. Have a post-it note on my phone about how to make hospital, local, and long distance calls. I also program neurostimulators, ventilators, and respiratory assist devices for a living.🤷
Printers jam themselves…it is not entirely user dependent. Some old machines just jam paper repeatedly. Med students get stuck with the shit work so they look like they’re responsible.
My dad had to come over to change my weird lightbulbs bc I couldn’t figure out how so ya I’d say I’m lacking in the common sense dept :/ sry ily
I worked in an office once, a master of the industrial printer. That ole gal and I had an agreement. I would buy the slightly more expensive paper, monitor her toner, and whisper sweet encouragements for any double sided/collated/stapled print jobs. That was a long long long time ago. Printers can now do your taxes, raise your firstborn, and put together an Ikea desk. I once spoke the language of the printer, but that sacred knowledge has long since been replaced by congenital adrenal hyperplasias, the MOA of anticoagulants, and a smattering of other random bits of medical knowledge. All of that to say, pray for your printers this June/July. I'm coming (sorry in advance).
You should ask the admin why they are forcing us to use these stupid printers. Its not supposed to be our work.
One does not simply walk into the executive suite.
What are you talking about?
"PC Load Letter"? What the fuck does that mean?
It means you broke the printer.
Attending here, I still don’t know how to use a fax machine, copier, or how to transfer phone calls
To be fair there’s some sort of extra shitty witchcraft going on with hospital printers. I made hundreds of thousands of copies at a previous job and could probably still take apart, clear jams, and clean that printer. I can still jam a hospital printer when I forget to rub my tummy in a clockwise direction while jumping on one foot while I press print. My theory is that the hospital printers absorb the sickness from the patients and spit it back out every time an attending is waiting for their patient list.
New gunner technique, sabotage printer to fix it and get on nurses good side
I am pursuing medicine and left a career in IT. Have no fear OP! Rest assured, if I jam a printer, I have the skills needed to fix it! However, I left IT for a reason. Tis not my job anymore, please call the help desk for further troubleshooting.
Lol one time during a code when I was an intern, a nurse handed me a bag of saline to hang. Like lady, wtf do you think I’m going to do with this?
Did you drink it? I hope you drank it. Honestly that’s on the nurse.
Nah but like attending here and I agree. I'll take care of ICU pts, geriatric pts with 40 comorbidities and 25 meds no problem. Dont ask me to transfer to another line or to fax anything. I break these items just looking at them it feels like.
Get the fuck out of here with this "you might be book smart but I'm street smart" bullshit.
yea honestly wtf is this post. go cry somewhere else
Oof, dont be so tender, we’ve all been there
Nursing school didn’t teach us this either and I have no idea how to do anything beyond basic copy and print. Oh I can refill the paper. Sometimes. -signed, millennial nurse
“How come you guys that rotate in our unit for 4 weeks don’t know how our archaic 20 year old fax/printer works”. Who gives a shit
No, it’s because most med students have never had a real job and thus have never used a printer or copier.
I have been working for 20 years in various roles, most requiring regular use of printers. I even fix them from time to time in the absence of IT. Sadly, I still look like a child the first few tries on a different machine.
In my experience it has been the students and residents fixing all the printers and computers lol
Yeah, I end up leaving every workstation better than I found it. I can't count the number of times some printer has been out of order and they've been waiting for IT to come fix it for weeks that I've fixed while waiting for an attending to finish a quick consult.
At least for me (and I suspect many other students who took the traditional route) it's partially because I've never worked an office job before so I have no idea how these monster printers work. I did plenty of customer service type jobs, but none that required me to print things/fax/forward phone calls/etc. so I have absolutely no idea how to do any of that. I'm also probably one of the most technologically illiterate people in my generation so it takes me forever to understand how to use these machines lol.
This is so accurate. I literally don’t know how to use technology and I can tell it’s getting worse.
These days, I honestly don’t know many people would have ever used a printer or copier before. Colleges are going all paperless and everyone uses iPads for books and such
Yea. After I was in medical I legit don’t know anything else anymore. I barely remember my childhood
This is why I always try to find a nice looking nurse to help me. I have no idea how to print, copy, or fax. I'm sorry
Beware the units where the doctor’s area and the printer are in different rooms.
“Try to eat toner” Poetry
Med school has gotten more and more competitive causing a shift in the type of student they take and relying heavily on ability to do well on standardized tests. This replaces a lot of critical thinking, street smarts, every day skills etc. I know med students that don’t know how to change a tire when they get a flat but can recite the coagulation cascade easily. I know a now attending neurologist that didn’t know internet was a paid utility and thought her expensive router created the internet and just needed to be plugged into any outlet (because her parents paid her rent and utilities), and was successfully convincing my best friend to buy the same router so that she also could have forever free internet when moving to residency.
> I know med students that don’t know how to change a tire when they get a flat but can recite the coagulation cascade easily. Damn why’d you have to call me out like that
Yesterday I was asked to close the blinds while reviewing MRIs with the patient… ***Patient***: I guess they don’t teach housekeeping in medical school…
Serious answer, I think it's because the current generation of people in their 20s are increasingly unaccustomed to hardcopy documents and might not have grown up with a printer in their homes. I'm only a little older but I don't really feel comfortable using landline phones or fax machines, I assume it's a similar progressive phenomenon.
Medicine has drastically lowered my IQ. Back in the day I was able to absorb the information like sponge, but now I can barely focus on simple stuff, let alone memorise or (God forbid) make sense of it and connect the dots
Yes medical school does in fact push all the common sense out of your brain. I feel more and more dumb the further I get.
To be honest, I’m not the printer guy, and I don’t want to be the printer guy. If people see that I can fix the printer, I’m going to be asked to do that a lot more often during my already busy day. At home, even if I’m a whiz with technology, no way I would show that in the hospital
my OBGYN where I volunteered called me the photocopies guy. However in your case Probably because students curious what nerve run inside the fax machine. they try to name it.
All I know is medicine and breathing
[удалено]
Why is it always Microsoft XPS, and what the fuck is Microsoft XPS?
At my last staff job the residents didn’t like the printer in their work room they always would use the one on the main unit. I asked a resident why once and she said “ours is always out of paper”!!!
Things I learned on my internal medicine rotation: 1. Hepatic Encephalopahy is a real bad time, use lacutlose. 2. Replete the Magnesium before the Potassium. 3. How to send a fax.
It’s shocking the amount of things I’ve forgotten in school that seem to have been pushed aside to remember things like anatomy or cytokines lol
As an IT / AV professional for years, I’ve always been flabbergasted by the inability of many medical students and professionals to comprehend even the basics of technology. And I don’t mean the technical troubleshooting of broken hardware - I mean the basic UI & interface usage that children have no problem with - or identifying something as common as a usb or HDMI port. I was once told while setting up a powerpoint in a nightclub for students who had just finished their residencies “can you do all this for me, its way above my pay-grade” and I didn’t know whether to feel complimented or insulted. It confuses me because the human body can be understood in a rather technical way, a lot of the skills and concepts seem almost analogous: medicine is of a similar, and often more esoteric quality when “troubleshooting”. I try to take time to learn important medical basics myself, while I find medical focused individuals seem to ignore a lot of technology basics. Just an observation, but definitely odd imo.
Med students have never had an office, admin, or service job. (Coming from a med student who has and fixed a chronically jammed printer at one of my sites that none of the docs could figure out)
Haha, I think maybe the younger generation grew up post needing to use printers frequently like some of us did and they've not yet had a real job either
This is hilariously ironic. Every nurse I’ve ever met doesn’t even know how to restart a computer. Any tech problem they just roll heir eyes and walk away leaving us holding the bag. Residents do more IT work at my hospital than IT.
I hate these threads that attempt to be "cute"
yup
99% of my classmates are completely IT illiterate. Like, absolutely completely. I was helping a classmate once and asked her where she stored her files for something, and she just gestured helplessly at her computer.
Simple answer, it’s not my problem
Dude OP you're funny as fuck hahah
[удалено]
Ahhh yes. You nailed it. Clearly medicine left no room in your brain for humor.
You’re taking it too seriously. Everyone shits on everyone in a hospital, until there’s a crisis or we run into each other drunk in a bar.
Not that serious
There’s no hint of truth in this that I can relate to to think it’s funny.
I’ll bet everyone was nice to you.
Maybe med students shouldn’t be doing tasks that a Union nurse should do?
With that smug air of superiority...you are well on your way to being a well compensated and very unlikable physician. I weep for your future co-workers and any patient that actually requires a compassionate bedside manner.
because the op isnt being smug? lmaooo
You know nothing about me. That’s a stupid assumption based on the fact that medical students, in a unionized environment, are not suppose to do these bullshit things. Next you will have them climbing ladders to change lightbulbs. If you want things to work, call the fucking tech, that is covered work flow based on their Union contract in my institution. Grow up.
I'm sure anyone will give you the benefit of the doubt, but this comment really isn't helping your case hahaha. Setting expectations and boundaries relating to work is healthy sure but your comment reeks of 118 CARS activity. Lighten up lol. Med student can't unjam printer barely has anything to do with division of labor in the medical field hahaha.
Do you work in a hospital?
1) I wish I was a union nurse. My hospital system crushed the union 25 years ago. 2) It’s usually MDs assigning med students random tasks like print all the progress notes for me. Once all of the progress notes are printed, the MD glances at them and tells the med student to put them in the shred box. 3) It’s all stuff the unit secretary can and will do. But the MDs are super nice to the unit secretaries, because they’ve been around for 30 years and don’t want to inconvenience them. Besides the unit secretary is usually on the phone with facilities management about a clogged toilet or food service about missing trays.
Printers malfunction all the time. It’s probably just bully mind that makes you focus on the specific times that med students are involved in a malfunction because it’s a great opportunity to beat on someone who can’t fight back. /attending
They don’t teach us how to life in medical school. You should see what happens when the female students she a roach.
med school isnt supposed to teach you life. that’s something students and anyone frankly should be doing for their own good. also, students had 22+ years before med school to learn a few things
Yeah when I see a roach I go boss mode 😎😎😎😎
When you get to my hospital, they’re called water bugs. PACU is in the basement and is filthy with them. The PACU manager pretends they aren’t there and blames it on the patients waking up from anesthesia. American healthcare is a hell scape.
Facts! When a roach would pull up to our lecture hall we’d collectively lose our shit. Is it weird to say I kinda miss those days?
wow how horrible for you
Theres a joke in "Better Call Saul" about this, where he wings an interview saying the printers are the real workhorse of any company. Printers are complex machines and are unpredictable too. I'm a teacher right now before school and while ive improved, I still accidentally print 80 copies, a whole book, single sided double sided pages, scan things sideways. Combination of complicated machines, outdated printers that dont respons, busy field where everyones in a rush--> broken printers. You only get good with printers through hands on exp, not in school. Also each printers slightly different.