HARTFORD, CT – A new study published in JAMA this week demonstrated a direct correlation between the physician douche level (PDL) and and the number of nursing pages per shift (PPS).
The PDL was calculated from asking 7,528 nurses to rate physicians in their hospitals on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being super nice and 10 being a narcissistic overbearing a**hole. After determining an average PDL score for each physician, a retrospective analysis reviewed the total number of pages sent out to each physician.
Other observations in the study included an increase in gang pages (5 or more pages in a minute) and pages that occur between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. for physicians whose PDL score was high (>7)
Common ways to increase PDL cited were:
- Being a narcissistic a**hole by cussing or yelling at nurses or other staff
- Belittling nurses, social workers, respiratory therapists, radiology Techs
- Ordering large doses of Lasix without a Foley in place
- Not returning pages
- Interrupting change of shift
- Ordering 0.1 mg of IV Dilaudid pushes on full grown adults
- Dismissing any ideas/concerns brought up by nurses
- Talking poorly about nurses in front of the patients
- A “know-it-all attitude” from a new resident
- Admitting patients to the ICU that clearly don’t need to be there
- Bringing patients back from the OR with tangled lines
The study did mention that this may be a casual observation and causation could not be proven, but after listening to almost every nurses’ opinion in the article, the authors concluded being a prick to nurses will almost certainly garner one more pages exponentially, typically between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.
