A national shortage of personal protective equipment or PPE is forcing nurses to get creative.

“I’m so happy to live in a country where supplies to make my own PPE are readily available!” nurse Shannon told her admin Thursday. “It was so easy. I went to Wal-Mart and bought myself a sewing machine. Then I ordered allergy-filter vacuum bags from Amazon Prime, cut them up, and sewed them to fabric I bought from Hobby Lobby. Grabbed some elastic bands and I had myself some PPE!”

She went on to say excitedly, “I can’t imagine another country where I could make my own mask, and get all the materials in 1 day. What a great country!” Shannon was so excited that anything she needed to make her own masks, besides the mask itself, is readily available.

Administration is also chipping in on the project. “We plan to let all nurses off after a 12-hour shift 5 minutes early so that can go home and sew,” Dan Eckbauch told reporters from his home far away from the dangers of the hospital.

“Until nurses can make their own PPE we still expect them to come to work with bandannas or scarves.”

FORT MYERS, FL – Deconditioned, weak, and perpetually hypoglycemic from such a prolonged hospital shift, exhausted RN Catherine Weal will be sent home with home health services.

“It was her sixth straight 12-hour shift, and we all know that 12 hours is a best-case scenario especially around the holidays,” explained sympathetic social worker Jason Grimes, who helped with Weal’s home health arrangements. “Her patient load was unbearable, and they were all really sick. That stage 3 sacral decubitus ulcer from charting all day looks bad. Her feet are all swollen from running around all day. She was barely able to walk by the end of her last shift.”

Nurse Weal was evaluated by both PT and OT, who recommended subacute rehabilitation, but Weal respectfully declined and stated her preference to go home. Grimes helped Weal get set up with home health nursing, physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), an aide, and wound care. A rolling walker, 3-in-1 commode, and hospital bed have already been delivered.

“I understand that I could make a faster recovery at rehab, but it’s just not the same as being at home, I just really want to go home,” revealed Weal, who has spent her 15-minute break lying prostrate on the floor. She misses seeing the sun, but misses her bed even more. “If I could just get a little help at home, I think I might be alright.”

Weal did meet with Palliative Care. Palliative Care did not feel she met criteria for inpatient hospice just yet. Even if she did, Weal wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

“I’m so tired, I don’t have the strength to lift a towel let alone throw one,” explained Weal, her fellow nurses helping turn her onto her back. She is still lying on the ground. All the lifting, shifting, and repositioning of patients has drained her; the fuel tank is empty. “I may not be going to hospice, but if anyone asks, I am a DNR.”

An on-going watch continues at Northshore Memorial Hospital as Tracy Smith, RN, is stuck at the pyxis trying to return an extra dose of oxycodone she took out by accident.

Direct sources (nurses who tried to help her but then determined that they didn’t have time for this shit) reveal that Nurse Smith attempted to take out her patient’s q6hr PRN dose of 10mg but accidentally clicked on his q4hr PRN breakthrough dose of 5 mg. The pyxis fooled her into thinking she had selected the right narcotic prescription (she even got the count right on the first try!) until she slammed the door shut and realized her error was permanent. Although she has the right amount of pills to give the correct dose, the pyxis thinks she is stealing a dose, and as we all know, what the pyxis thinks is happening trumps all reality.

Thinking quickly, she obtained another nurse and they tried to return to bin, but per the fucking usual, the med was unable to scan and opened an internal miscellaneous drawer, but this was the second to last oxy left and Nurse Smith knew she would eventually need it when the patient demanded his q4hr PRN, and the likelihood of it being restocked by pharmacy in a time frame remotely helpful to the flow of patient care was slim to none.

Nurse Smith grabbed another innocent nurse who was only passing through looking for a pulse oximeter that would stay on her patient (ha! good luck!) and they tried to edit and cancel the med, which almost worked until the selected box on the screen was greyed out for no apparent reason.

Updates now reveal that the two nurses are standing there staring at the screen, then back at the oxy, then back at the screen, desperately trying to figure out how to remedy the situation without receiving a berating email from pharmacy asking what the hell they thought they were doing with that extra oxy.

Nurse Smith’s colleague is trying to make an SOS call to the charge nurse but sadly, she can’t hear the answer since her patient’s pulse ox has fallen off again and the monitor is ringing through her phone while she makes her call. Meanwhile, Nurse Smith’s patient has “basically died” from 3/10 pain.

NASHVILLE, TN – Medical staff at Nashville Memorial Hospital are completely baffled by a new fleet of hospital beds on Unit 55-G, saying that it’s without question easier to solve an acid-base disorder.

“Why does the Up button to raise the patient’s head turn on classical music, and why does the red call light lock the wheels in place?” asked charge nurse Greg DiFranco, surrounded by dozens of equally clueless health care professionals. Additionally, kicking off the brakes deflates the bed and lowering the arm rails rings the front desk. “It’s a hospital bed, for Pete’s sake! Am I missing something?”

With morale at a new low, medical staff have huddled at the nurses station to solve some triple acid-base disorders, which they can now oddly enough completely do with ease. This never happened before these new hospital beds came along. Get this: the Krebs cycle makes sense.

“Maybe we’re in some sort of parallel universe?” asked neurologist Louise Reed, who personally thinks these new beds have infarcted. Even she finally understands compensation formulas with acid-base disorders. “If everyone here hasn’t lost a pen today, we’re definitely in a parallel universe.”

The medical staff have informed administration about the faulty beds, and in response administration has taken swift and appropriate action: they have ordered more faulty beds.

NASHVILLE, TN – In an effort to provide much needed peace and quiet for the medical staff, Unit 4G at Nashville Memorial Hospital has extended its quiet hours, which will now take place between 3 PM and 2:59 PM.

“Patients, nurses, and other medical staff really took a liking to the 3 PM to 4 PM quiet time we installed last year,” explained 4G Unit Director Nurse Dolly Rebecca. “The lights were turned down, everyone spoke at a whisper if at all, people paused and caught their breaths, it was great. It was a much needed break from the hectic pace of the day, especially the weekdays. The next step made sense.”

Effective immediately, the same implemented steps will hold true and even taken to the blissful extreme: interaction between any two human beings on the unit will be forbidden; naps will be required and enforced; all computers will be unplugged; all pagers, IV pumps, and overhead announcements will be deactivated; and, most importantly, all drama will be banned, a zero-tolerance policy.

Except from 2:59 PM to 3 PM each day, which will admittedly be a sh*tshow, but everyone understands that. Twenty-three hours and 59 minutes of peace and quiet though? Who wouldn’t take it?

“Now this is what in-hospital life should be like,” Rebecca responded, which was quickly followed by a chorus of “SHUSSHHH!!!!!” from nurses and doctors within earshot.

“Sorry!” Rebecca whispered back.

GREENVILLE, SC – Hailing it as 2019’s best new medical invention, a new IV pump by Shmalaris is like any other competitor’s IV pump except it offers one major feature the others don’t: a Silence button that lasts 24 hours.

Out on pre-order as of yesterday, the Shmalaris pump sold out, the company reports, “a bajillion” pumps in less than 10 minutes.

“We knew the demand would be high, but not this high!” exclaimed Shmalaris spokesperson Eileen Crawford, who has been happily pulling overtime . “Our team could not be more grateful from all the support, particularly from nurses and doctors.”

Doctors, who are notoriously inept at using IV pumps, are beyond thrilled with what they call a revolutionary product. “The days of pressing the Silence button and finding the nurse are over,” said hospitalist Jeffrey Corea, who now can focus his energy on how to operate a hospital bed. “Now I can press the Silence button and walk away until tomorrow. That’s just fantastic!”

Nurses will find the day-long Silence button a boon to their bedside management, especially when they’ve appropriately troubleshot a beeping IV pump and still can’t figure out what is setting it off.

“Between the Ativan diffuser, call lights with lockout intervals, and these new Shmalaris pumps, nursing just reached a whole new bar of awesome,” joked American Nurses Association spokesperson Erica Jewell, who personally has ordered 50,000 of the pumps. “Seriously, how has this not been invented until now?!”

MOUNT LAUREL, NJ – Brace yourselves, a long-assumed notion once held about a certain class of health care professionals has just been completely obliterated: A spokesperson for the Wound Ostomy and Continence Nurses (WOCN) Society has revealed that wound care nurses doesn’t really care about wounds, not one bit.

“Don’t get us wrong, we’ll take good care of the wound in question because that’s our job, we’re professionals after all,” said WOCN spokesperson William O’Connor-Nolan, who could think of a billion other things he cares more about than debriding this infected heel ulcer. “But if you asked me if I really give a damn about wounds and I had to give you a truly honest answer, I’d have to say no, I just don’t care at all.”

Anyone who has ever seen a wound dressed by a wound care nurse knows that it took a lot of time and effort to get that wound looking as good as it does. It’s the work of someone who is really invested in what they are doing.

Wound care nurses must care, right?

“Hell no!” exclaimed wound care nurse Whitney O’Clery-Norris, who is relieved the cat is out of the bag regarding the misconception that wound care nurses care. “Hogwash. I can take care of stage 5 sacral decubitus wounds with my eyes closed. Doesn’t mean I want to or I enjoy it. I don’t care. I just don’t. I honestly couldn’t give two flying f…”

To prove it, O’Connor-Nolan showed us the results of a recent WOCN Society meeting in which all attendees were asked to rate how much they cared about wounds, using a scale from 0 (“I don’t care”) to 10 (“I completely care”). The average score was -1.

“You want to know what’s the only wound I care about?” asked O’Connor-Nolan, while getting up to point at his sacrum. “My own decubitus. You know, this nice large stage 4 I’ve developed from charting all damn day.”

BOSTON, MA – A landmark study published in the Just-Like-New England Journal of Medicine has confirmed that no nurses station in any health care facility across this country has a 1-to-1 ratio of computers to chairs, GomerBlog reports.

The findings confirmed what many health care professionals have observed over decades of clinical experience: the nurses station has either too many chairs or too few chairs. In other words: WTF.

“We call it the Goldilocks & The Three Bears dilemma, or Goldilocks for short,” explained charge nurse Lucy Spence, who has been standing for the past three hours since sitting is not an option. “For reasons outside of our understanding, the number of chairs and computers are never equal. It’s never just right.”

The most puzzling scenario, which happens all too frequently, is when there is a plethora of computers but not a single chair in sight. With all of our missing pens having been recently discovered in a parallel universe, many nurses, doctors, and other health care professionals can’t help but wonder if there is yet another parallel universe with extra chairs.

“It’s the Law of the Conservation of Chairs,” explained NASA Administrator Elizabeth Flowers. “If they’re not at the nurses station, they must be somewhere. I instinctively want to blame Anesthesia, but I think they’re off the hook on this one.”

Another more radical theory proposes that for every open beverage container at the nurses station one chair dies.

“Until we can figure this out for sure,” added Flowers, “I strongly recommend keeping those open beverages away. Not because of the Joint Commission, but because killing chairs goes against primum non nocere or first do no harm.”

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Confronted with a locked door with an electronic keypad, a nurse was shocked to find that the code was not blatantly etched on the door or doorframe somewhere.

“This completely breaches one of the unsaid rules in the hospital,” said RN Annie Bolt.  “If there’s a code for a hospital door, just look high up on the door or the doorframe.  It’ll be there. No one ever memorizes the codes to these doors.  I’m speechless.”

To make matters worse, no one appears to be on the other side of the door, making entry that much harder. 

For decades, nurses and other health care professionals have had no time to commit several random numbers to memory.  Thus, the solution seemed easy for professionals tasked with documenting all the time: document the code around door.

“You don’t tell anyone it’s there,” Bolt explained, “but every doctor, nurse, PA, tech, whomever knows it’s there.  It’s an unwritten code.”

Well, actually, it’s a written unwritten code.

Unable to wait any longer, Jones ventured a guess.  She was relieved to know she got it in one try.  “1, 2, 3, 4,” Jones told us with a smile.  “Hospital door codes, incredibly hard to crack.”

ATLANTA, GA – A patient is transferring out of the medical intensive care unit today and, according to the MICU team, “just needs a little TLC” before being discharged home.

“Say no more,” said hospitalist Dr. Evelyn Prince, who believes the best intervention any Atlanta-based health care professional can provide for their patients is a regular regimen of TLC’s 1994 masterpiece CrazySexyCool, featuring Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas.

Prince recommends listening to the album at least twice daily.

“After the patient listens to the album for the first time,” Prince continued with a smile, “I like to pop my head in and say ‘Let’s Do It Again’.”

According to our medicine & music experts at Gomerblog, no infection or malady can’t be undone with this R&B album. In fact, several studies have shown that the combination of tracks “Diggin’ on You” & “Waterfalls” is ten times more effective than the combination of antibiotics vancomycin & Zosyn.

Conclusion: Everyone needs a little TLC.

In related news, if any of our fellow health care professionals need new scrubs, you can find them hangin’ out the passenger side, of his best friend’s ride, tryin’ to holler at me.