The Case of Contaminated Foley Catheter Tip

In our hospital any catheters used by the patient or even tubes are sent to the lab after removing it. This morning we sent a Foley catheter tip for culture and sensitivity. At around four in the afternoon, the laboratory was calling the unit and informed us that the Foley catheter tip we sent was contaminated with urine.

PAUSE….

another PAUSE…

then all the critical care staff burst out laughing.

FYI, Foley catheters are inserted in the patients urethra into the urinary bladder to drain urine and then connected to a urine bag/drainage bag. So of course, the Foley catheter will contain urine. The purpose of the culture and sensitivity for the catheter tip is to determine if there was a growth of an organism which is not normally found in the urine and to determine what specific antibiotic to use to kill that microorganism.

Funny thing is, they are even mad at us for sending a “contaminated” specimen. It’s like saying that the endotracheal tube is contaminated sputum and the dialysis catheter is contaminated with blood.

OMG. I don’t know what school you are from and I doubt if you are even a registered laboratory technician.

After 2 hours…

Doctor Emad and I are still laughing over the contaminated Foley catheter. He’s red as ever.:))

The Case of Not Known Allergies

I’ve been a registered nurse since 2007 and never in my nursing career had I encountered the phrase: NOT KNOWN ALLERGIES. I’m not an English expert, but in school they also never used the term NOT KNOWN ALLERGIES. We only used NKA or No Known Allergies which basically means that the patient has no allergies to their knowledge. It confuses me every time I see my co-nurses (mostly Indians) document it as not known allergies, its like they are saying that they have not asked the if the patient has allergies or not.

So I asked an Journalism major friend of mine and this is what she said,

NOT is used to negate verbs, NO is used with nouns.

Opinions? What do you think?

The girl in blue scrub suit