Journal of Nursing Jocularity

It was a warm spring day when my student called with a question on her assigned patient. The physician had ordered a stool for Ova and Parasites, and she wanted to know how to collect the specimen.  I told her to obtain the specimen on a tongue blade and take it immediately to the lab.

Shortly after, I was at the elevator when the door opened and there was my student, in the middle of a crowded elevator.  She looked so prim and proper in her crisp student nurse uniform wearing her nursing cap.  Then I noted the uncomfortable faces of everyone else in the elevator.

The student was holding a tongue blade with a large lump of stool precariously balanced on it!

In Lesson Two, I taught the need for proper containers, the labeling of lab specimens, and the importance of the feedback loop in communications!

As a pre-med student, I had to take a difficult class in physics.  One day our professor was discussing a particularly complicated concept when a student rudely interrupted to ask, “Why do we have to learn this stuff?”

“To save lives,” the professor responded quickly, and continued the lecture.

A few minutes later, the same student spoke up again.  “So how does physics save lives?” he persisted.

The professor replied, “It usually keeps the idiots like you out of medical school!”