In a move sparked by the popularity of the horror movie franchise, The Purge, the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Hospital Organizations (JCAHO) has announced the institution of an annual “Patient Safety Purge” for hospitals throughout the United States.
The Purge will nullify all measures intended by the Joint Commission to keep patients safe for a 12-hour period.
When asked to comment on the news, JCAHO CEO Mark Chassin responded, “Right now, nobody cares about the Joint Commission. Every hospital starts following the rules for 2 weeks every few years when we do inspections, then its back to business as usual. By bringing The Purge to the health care sector, providers can get all their dangerous and reckless behaviors out of their system once a year. Ultimately, the patients will benefit from this. Well, first they will suffer tremendously, but then, they’ll definitely, probably benefit.”
The Patient Safety Purge will begin with the following statement transmitted across all EMR systems simultaneously:
EMERGENCY EMR SYSTEM
This is not a test.
This is your emergency EMR system announcing the commencement of The Annual Patient Safety Purge sanctioned by The Joint Commission. All patient safety measures will be suspended for 12 continuous hours. During The Purge, the following JCAHO regulations will no longer be enforced:
Hand washing
Open containers in nursing stations
Eating in nursing stations
Eating in front of patients who are NPO
Eating behind patients who are NPO
Contact precautions
Airborne precautions
Precautions
Scrubbing before surgery
Wearing scrubs in the OR
Wearing clothes in the OR
Beard masks
EMR documentation
Labeling blood samples
Labeling patients
Labeling labels
Scanning things
Needing a license to provide any medical care to anybody whatsoever
Medical alarms
Blindfolded central line placement competitions
Blindfolded Pap smear competitions
Excessive profanity
Throwing sharp objects in the operating room
Procedure time outs
Whistling the Sanford and Son theme song during unsedated colonoscopies
Unsedated colonoscopies
Drinking alcohol whenever and wherever you want to drink alcohol
Clinical correlation
The presence of pharmacists
Emptying thousands of pill bottles into an industrial sized drum then letting patients grab fistfuls TID.
Taping mouths shut.
Vital signs.
Using charades to describe surgical complications to family members.
The act of thinking before ordering blood tests.
Codes.
Duty hour restrictions.
Pyxis-related violence.
Physician bans on touching IV poles.
Speaking to nurses during shift change.
MRSA screens.
Allowing patients on the psych ward to play Pokémon Go.
The Hippocratic Oath.
HIPAA.
Blessed be the Joint Commission, a health care system reborn. May God be with you all.
