Given the overarching success of the Pain Score leading to the opioid crisis, The Joint Commission (for Healthcare Absurdity) has now added the sixth vital sign in the form of the Crazy Score. It is designed to help all health care providers recognize if patients or their family members are nuts and to quantify this in a way that is helpful to other healthcare providers. Unlike the pain scale that leads to unneeded and harmful intervention, the Crazy Scale is just a communication tool.
Nurse Anita Peay reports that being able to use the very simple Crazy score at shift change report helps quickly communicate the needs of the patient with the least amount of words allowing the nurses to get to post shift happy hour the quickest. Bubba and Ileen Redneck report the score is very helpful because hospital staff are not continually asking the same questions such as “Does your mama have mental problems or is she just beating up the security guard for the fun of it?” or “Are you married to your cousin?” Healthcare administrator, James Bowtie BSN, MSN, CRNP, MHA, MBA, POS feels that this is another excellent tool and plans to add it to the code checklist and thinks the positive patient comments will help enhance Press Ganey scores.
