Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Tina again with Good Nurse, Bad Nurse. Welcome back to another episode of this podcast where we...
Use stories from the news to talk about issues in healthcare, in particularly nursing or different professions. But for today, we have a returning guest with us, Sierra, who is a medical assistant now. The last time she was on to help me host, she was in school. So Sierra, I can't wait to get to discuss with you when we get to the Good Nurse segment.
all about being a medical assistant and what your experience has been over the past year since you've been doing this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a lot different now. Yeah. So I'm really excited to kind of talk about, chat about, you know, your job and what all entails, the differences, you know, but maybe differences between, you know, nursing versus MAs and your scope of practice and all of that stuff. And of course, that's going to vary state to state, but we'll get to, when we get to the good nurse segment, we'll talk about that.
for the bad nurse segment. So I have to definitely do a trigger warning on this. It's
It's not that graphic or anything, but that there's inappropriate sexual type topics. I'll just say that and then I'll let you guys kind of figure out for yourselves how you feel about it. It's very disturbing for sure. So I just wanted to take a few seconds to tell you guys how my experience has been going with the Magic Mind mental performance shot. My whole family has been taking this now for, I guess, six months now.
and I just can't tell you what a difference it has made in my mental clarity, my ability to focus, while at the same time, it having almost a sort of calming effect. It's so cool. I take it in the morning, first thing right before I have my coffee, and the thing that really makes it obvious to me
that it's actually working so well is that I don't need that extra afternoon cup of coffee that I usually go for, which if you know me, you know how much I love coffee. So that's really saying a lot. But their formula works with your coffee and helps it last longer without causing that crash that's usually associated with caffeine. So
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Dr. Levy's case is, as I said earlier, deeply disturbing. It's an example of unethical behavior within the medical profession. And of course, whenever we deal with the bad nurse segment, that's what we're kind of shining a light on that behavior. And that's the whole point of this segment. So Dr. Levy was born in Jamaica in 1964. He immigrated to the U.S. and pursued a successful medical career there.
He became an OBGYN at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital where he worked for over two decades.
Outwardly, he was known as a caring physician, but behind the scenes, he was committing heinous acts of privacy violations and abuse. So this gets disturbing and dark very quickly, Sierra. And it's going to just kind of make, I feel like it's going to make everyone paranoid. But that's, you know, that's sort of like, you can't just pretend like it doesn't happen. But I kind of feel like it's something everyone's paranoid about anyway. Yeah.
And the fact that this was actually happening is just, it makes me so mad, honestly. It makes me mad too. It's infuriating. And the fact that it was over so many years, there are going to be so many, well, there have been so many people. So starting sometime in the late 2000s, Dr. Levy began secretly recording female patients during their medical exams without their knowledge or consent.
He used various covert devices such as pen cameras and key fobs. I feel like just anything you could imagine could be a camera, potentially, and, like, you would never know it. Yeah, and, like, we have the glasses that can be cameras now, and so it's like, you never know. You just, you never know. Yeah.
Yeah, and I just kind of as a little bit of an aside, I like to interject, you know, some advice for nurses and other healthcare professionals who are working, you know, with patients and, and dealing with family members and in these settings, like in hospitals, doctor's offices, all these different places, places.
I just pretend like you're being filmed all the time. And I don't care what your policy is at your hospital or your clinic or your doctor's office. I don't care what the policy is. I would just assume that there are cameras everywhere and, you know, behave accordingly. Because, you know, if you drop a pill on the floor, you're
Pick it up and throw it away and go get another one. Don't do the, you know, the time saving technique that I've heard tale of, you know, well, you know, the three, three second rule of the 10 second rule or whatever second is depending on how long it was on the floor. I feel like it changes. Yeah, depend depending on the person. It depends on the person as to what they say. But yeah, don't don't do that.
Yeah, there is no second rule when it comes to that sort of thing. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the types of things that I've seen in the stories that I've researched, heard people talk about, people talk about it on social media, some of the, you know, start, you know, going all the way from just questionable to completely, you know, unethical or criminal, right?
And it kind of can range those things that you can do as a healthcare professional, if you think no one is looking. And what I'm trying to tell you is that I would hope that you have the integrity if you're a healthcare professional, I would just hope that you would have integrity, and that you're going to act however you act, if nobody's looking is going to be the same as if everyone, you know, as if there is someone you're in front of a crowd. But
If you don't have that, if you don't have that keeping you honest, just assume that you're being recorded. Because you probably are, really. I mean, at some point, we're in the hospital, and you're probably being recorded, and you have no idea. Yeah, I mean, it very well could be a patient recording you doing whatever, you know, you're having to do, and it can come back and bite you. Yeah.
It absolutely can. And it may be harmless. Maybe people just want, you know, concern for their loved ones. Maybe they're recording because they want to remember instructions, you know, like after surgery or pre-surgery instructions, just all sorts of reasons. But just keep in mind that as you're going through this world, this day and age, just assume that you're being recorded. Driving down the road, you know, it drives me crazy when I see like true crime things and people, you
They literally the police are like, yeah, we have a, you know, a timeline CCTV timeline of this person, like they left their house, and then they drove down this street and that one, because their ring cameras everywhere. So you, they literally can trace your, your path, the route that you went once, you know, once they start investigating, if you get on their radar whatsoever, they're
It's not that hard for them to kind of, you know, be able to trace your steps. So keep that in mind, guys, when you're trying to do, you know, doing whatever it is, this behavior that gets you into the bad nurse segment. Hopefully it's not what this doctor's doing, but don't do it. Just don't. Yeah. Well, and in this case...
The people that are being recorded are literally just innocent victims. They're just there to be, they're a patient and they're, they, they, you know, are assuming that they are being taken care of by someone that they can trust. This is completely different than, you know, you're, you're doing something wrong and in getting caught. This is a patient who trusts their provider and that trust was betrayed. So,
He captured images and videos while performing routine gynecological examinations. His victims ranged in age and background, but many came from underprivileged communities who relied on his care. This was like a community clinic run by Johns Hopkins University.
He stored thousands of photos and videos of these intimate and private moments on his personal computer, amassing a disturbing archive of illegal material. His actions were a blatant violation of medical ethics and patient trust, as well as a clear breach of the law.
The magnitude of his violation stunned investigators and led to obviously significant outrage. So in February of 2013, his illegal activities were brought to light when a colleague noticed a suspicious device in his office and reported it. So upon further investigation, police raided his home.
and discovered more than 1,200 videos and thousands of images of patients, and that led to his termination from Johns Hopkins and a widespread investigation into the extent of his crimes. I can't imagine being a patient in this situation and then discovering that my provider had been accused or had even been accused of it.
you know, to think, oh, am I on that person's computer? Like, that's so incredibly, incredibly disturbing to think about. Well, not just...
to think that you're on their computer, but it's like, who else have they shown this to? Have they sold this? You don't know what they've done with it once they've recorded it. Yeah, that's true. I mean, just the thought, the potential of it's out there. It's, it's on his computer, his hard drive, but did, yeah, did he sell it to sites? Did he upload it to some cloud or who knows? Is it still out there? Will it surface at some point?
decades down the road. It's something to think about. So despite the overwhelming evidence, Dr. Levy never faced trial for his crimes. Shortly after the investigation began, he ended his life in his home, leaving behind many unanswered questions for the authorities and most importantly, the victims he had violated over many years.
The aftermath of the case was significant for both Johns Hopkins and the broader medical community. Johns Hopkins agreed to a $190 million settlement, one of the largest ever for a case of medical malpractice. The settlement was designed to compensate the more than 8,000 patients who had been seen by Levy during his career. 8,000 patients.
Can you imagine the nightmare of combing through all of these patients and trying to determine, you know, just like the breadth of this whole 20-year career and all of the different people that he saw and the damages? Because the damages didn't, it wasn't like just across the board, everyone got the same thing. It depended on the severity, the, you know,
quote, damage that was done individually. So they literally had to take each individual case. I can't even imagine. No, I can't imagine. And also being the person to have to decide, well, this person deserves more because this, this and this happened to him versus the other person when it's like they were all equally, you know, violated. They absolutely were all victimized for sure. One victim said,
I'm angry because I took my kids to him. I trusted him with my children, not only just me, but my kids. So she went to him. And then as she had daughters who got old enough to need to go see a gynecologist, she took them to him as well. I can't imagine dealing with that guilt. No, no. And that's what I was thinking too. When we were going through it, I was like,
It said it varies in ages. That could mean anywhere from a 14-year-old to a 60-year-old, you know? I mean, it's awful. Yeah, it really is. This particular patient, she started seeing him in 2007, and then a couple of years later, her 14- and 15-year-old daughters. Another victim...
said that she kind of had some reservations. She had that gut feeling. You guys have talked to you about this before, having a gut feeling and then kind of like shooting away and just thinking, you know, I'm probably overreacting. That's what this particular person said. I just thought I was just young and naive. And I was just nervous about it and didn't really understand the way things were supposed to go down. She said, I thought, well, maybe this is right.
They're the professionals, so they know what they're doing. I'm just the patient. But she said it didn't seem right, the way that the examination was going. So Johns Hopkins had a policy of having chaperones being present during pelvic exams. And that was not being done consistently. So one thing that I want to remind you guys about that I've said this over and over and over again is that you have the right to request surgery.
If you're going to be disrobing in any way and have to be alone with your provider, you have the right to ask for a chaperone. You have the right to say, can somebody step in here? I don't, I don't, you know, I'd just rather, I'd feel more comfortable if it was another person in the room.
Most, I don't think it's necessarily law or maybe it's different state to state, but most places are going to have that policy. They're just to keep themselves from having that liability. I would think most providers would want that too, wouldn't you, Sierra? Yeah, most providers are going to ask you to stand in for anything like that, at least in my experience, even if it's just having to...
Cleaned wounds, anything. They want someone else in that room. So if that patient comes back and says something happened, they have another witness there with them so that they cover their backs. It's just a responsible thing to do. It absolutely is. And if that's not happening, question it. Question it. Don't be afraid to question that because...
Not only are you standing up for yourself, but you if you make that provider uncomfortable, maybe it will cause them to, you know, for other patients as well, not want to be put in the position of, you know, being being questioned about why they didn't have a chaperone in there. Yeah.
Yeah, like that was one of the first things we learned in school whenever we were talking about any kind of gynecological exams, having to any disrobing whatsoever, especially if it's a male provider, they typically will have someone in the room with them. The women too, but mostly you're going to be asked by the male providers because they
People will come back and say things. You mentioned earlier about being worried about whether or not those photos or videos could get leaked onto the Internet somehow. Law enforcement did not find any evidence that Dr. Levy had sold or posted any of the pictures on the Internet. And they consider the case closed. That would kind of make me nervous. Yeah. And even though they didn't find any evidence of it, it's still...
It's almost creepier that he was just doing that all for himself. I guess it depends on how you look at it. There's no scenario in which this is not a creepy situation, no matter what he did with it. But to think that once something like that gets out on the internet, there's just no getting it back. It's just out there.
And I would just think, you know, you were talking about the damage done and how, you know, how could you decide, how could you put a number on? And then the legal system has ways of doing this, but how can you, you know, decide, oh, this person gets more money than this person. The thing is, the psychological damage of just not knowing, you know, you
law enforcement says there's no evidence, that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. That doesn't mean that, as I said earlier, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, there's not going to, somehow something's not going to surface. I just don't know how you put a number on that or decide like this person's damage was worse than this one. Because they don't
There were, as I said earlier, there were people who said that he did like an inappropriate number or frequency of pelvic exams, like...
He did them more frequently than was necessary for some patients. Inappropriate breast exams. So there was some of them kind of went over even the line of just the hidden cameras that he was inappropriately touching. So you cross the line from just recording to actually physical abuse.
Yeah. And who's to say if someone hadn't have found out how far he would have gone? Because usually with people like this, they will keep pushing and pushing and pushing, trying to see how far they can get with what they're doing. And so who's to say he wouldn't have gone the full mile with it?
if that employee hadn't have found that device and been like, hey guys, I think something's wrong here. Yes. And I definitely want to take a second to just think about that person. And I'm very thankful. I know the victims are very, very thankful that that person had the courage to do that because when
when you think about working in an office setting and how close you are to, you can be to your coworkers, your, your, your colleagues, your, the, I don't care if they're a doctor, what, what their role is, you develop a sort of a, you know, working relationship with people. So imagine how difficult it would be if you had that suspicion and you,
you felt like you needed to come forward and say something. I mean, once you open that, you know, can of worms, there's no putting them back in. It's like, and you know that. And if you're, if you say something and it turns out to not be anything, then now you've said something and, and it wasn't even, you know, you've made a false accusation. So, um,
thank goodness that person had the courage to speak up and say something. Yeah. If they hadn't have had the courage, like I said, who knows how long this could have gone on. And then I can understand how like finding something like that and having the doubts of, well, he is actually a good guy and I haven't seen anything suspicious, but this doesn't seem right. Right.
And then you have to think of, oh, well, is the entire office going to hate me for doing this? And is this the right thing to do? Or am I just being paranoid? Yeah. And just like I said earlier with some of his patients who...
who would, who still say they would stand behind him if, if, if he were alive, because he was such a good doctor and they had gone to him for so long. And he seemed like such a, like some, there were some people, there were coworkers and, and patients who were just really could not believe it. And some people are like, well, he didn't get his day in court. He, he, it wasn't proven one way or another because he's not, he's not alive, but
The fact is that Johns Hopkins did pay out that $190 million settlement. So there's that. And I do, I know that sometimes these large entities, they come to these agreements because they just want it to go away. But in this case, when you have where law enforcement is saying there were all these videos, all of these photographs, you have a coworker who found a device. The law enforcement says they found these devices, but,
And you have patients who are telling about their experience. In fact, there is one patient who said that she said that she saw a kind of a weird looking pen on like he kept it hung around his neck. And she he seemed to play with it a lot. And she said she mentioned it to him like, hey, is that your toy? And he said, this is my favorite pen.
And she said later on, after she found out about this, she said to her husband, I bet you anything that was a camera. And, you know, obviously it was. That's just disgusting. That is just disgusting. Yeah. So the fact is, you know, when you put all this information together and you kind of line it all up, yes, he took his life. But you would think that if somebody was
or innocent, they would want to stick around to prove their innocence. So I don't know. You can't say that he's guilty, but you can kind of assume if that can't say he is, but everything's adding up.
So I have to tell you guys about an experience I had with a nursing student. So you know, I've been doing travel nursing. Well, this hospital where Matt has a lot of LPN students doing their clinicals there. So one of them was following me around one day, and she noticed my stethoscope. And of course, y'all know the Echo technology company that sponsors our podcast, they teamed up with Littman to make the stethoscopes to beat all stethoscopes, the 3m Littman core digital stethoscope. And this is the one that I use now. So she said, Oh my gosh, I've been wanting to try one of those. So of
So of course I let her use it and she just could not stop talking about it for the rest of the shift. It was so cute. She was like, you know, I can't hear anything with my normal stethoscope because I have tinnitus. And so she was so excited because she could actually hear what heart sounds were supposed to sound like. She said, I'm going to ask for one of these for graduation. And I was like, yeah, you definitely should. So just so you know,
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Well, I guess that kind of wraps up the bad nurse story so we can get into the good nurse portion. So I'm really, really excited about this because I had wanted, before you came on, I had wanted to have a medical assistant on. There's a lot of chat, you know, chatter that goes on social media about what medical assistants do. And for a while there, I heard people saying, oh, nursing is going to go away. It's going to be all medical assistants.
I think people just like to create drama. So they say stuff like that. They said this, they said the same thing, but kind of the reverse of that about LPNs, they were going to go away that, that, that because they were wanting nurses to have, you know, they're to go to school for longer and get their associates. They said the associates nurses are going to go away and they only wanted to have bachelors that literally has backed way off because they
When they started trying to do that, they realized that they weren't able to staff the hospitals. So they had to allow the associate degree nurses and the LPNs to do their job the way they were educated to do. How long have you been a medical assistant now? I'm coming up on six months in the clinic that I've been in. So it's been a good portion. You know, the first month is like, well, this is the best thing ever. And then you slowly start realizing, okay,
I love this, but... It's a job. I think it's work. But this is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Healthcare is just, oh, wow. It's a whole animal. So you've been doing it for six months. Can you kind of give us a little bit of a rundown of like, in general, what a medical assistant does? And then what do you do specifically where you work? So for the most part, I think the easiest way to explain like a regular...
office medical assistant, because medical assistants, we get trained to do both clinical side and administrative side. So there's like medical assistants that'll do it, but they'll just be strictly administrative. And then there's ones who do more clinical stuff. But usually if you see a medical assistant on the clinical side, they're going to be the person that is coming in, usually taking your vitals and
They'll give you your injections. They'll explain things that the doctor needs to have explained to you. Pretty much, it's like...
We're outside of the hospital nurses, if that makes sense, but with way, way less education than a nurse. So what sort of scope of practice for your job? Do you do injections? What types of things are you able to do, like interventions when dealing with the patient? So when it comes to the patient, we're allowed to administer medication, injections, phlebotomy.
We are allowed to do intravenous, starting IVs and everything. Like I said, we can pretty much do a little bit of everything as long as it's under what the doctor says we can do and as long as it's legal. So most of our scope of practice comes from whatever clinic we're working at. Are you under – is there a license or some sort of certificate, like a state level license?
license or certification or what exactly is it? So with mine, I'm registered with the National Health Association. So I'm through the NHA. So my technical title is Certified Clinical Medical Assistant. There's also registered medical assistants. They've gone to school quite a bit longer than the certified ones have. And if you work as a certified medical assistant long enough, you're
under a single provider, you can have that provider write a letter for you and apply to be a registered medical assistant. So it's, like I said, it's significantly less training than what nurses go through and honestly what registered medical assistants go through. Because like I said, they go through the normal college, whereas they put us through a crash course. Yeah.
And they're like, every night we're doing vitals. And guess what? You're drawing blood next week. How long is that course? It's kind of funny because I've been working about as long as I was in school. So it was about a six-month course. I started it at the end of...
May of 2023 and then was done with it at the beginning of October of 2023. Okay. So I think LPNs go to school for about a year, probably varies different programs and maybe even state to state. But do you know how long the registered medical assistant schooling is?
So from what I know and what I've looked into, because I was looking into that before I decided to go through the shorter course, is their course is more of you're going to actual college classes on campus and you're having to go through anatomy classes, everything on top of going through clinical. So it takes a little bit longer and you also have to have your first two years of college to be able to do that course.
So it's like an associate's degree. Yes, yes. As a nurse, you can get an associate's degree, you know, in nursing, and that's very similar. You go to school for, you know, you kind of get those couple two-year, well, I guess it depends. It can be two semesters or two years, depending on how you want to spread it out. Depending on how crazy you are. Yeah, but you can kind of cram all those prerequisites in however you do that, and then...
the actual nursing school part. So I think it's basically three years. Cause I think you can do like, you can get all your prerequisites done in like a year for your, you know, like for your associates. And then I think it takes pretty much four semesters to get those nursing. So essentially an associate's degree in nursing is, is about a three year degree technically, even though it's only a two year degree. And then a bachelor's degree in nursing is like,
everything you do in an associate's degree, and then they have a few extra classes, it's a little slower than the associate's degree. Like, so you get, you can take a, it takes, you know, longer, you have maybe, I don't know, it's, it,
Obviously, it's more spread out. So you're not having to cram all those really difficult classes on together because you're kind of taking them along with other classes, kind of like management, administrative type nursing stuff that you don't get in the associate's degree. I was getting my glasses a couple months ago and I was talking to the girl that was fitting my frames and there is you can get an associate's degree online.
as an, what is that? Is it optician? I think that's a pretty cool program. I was, I was so surprised at all, you know, that you can get an associate. There's so many things you can get an associate's degree in that I don't know if people are, you know, actually aware of in, in healthcare. True. And I was looking it up, making sure I'm right on this. And it is because RMAs have more training, but they also get a different exam than the certified. Yeah.
clinical medical assistant does. Okay. So there's three different tests that we can take. I took the NHA, which is the National Healthcare Career Association. RMAs take American Medical Technologists exam, and then just a regular CMA will take American Association of Medical Assistants. So it also varies on who you're accredited through.
That's interesting. So it's the difference between a medical assistant versus a medical technologist. That reminds me of the people that do like the radiology technologists, like the people that we call techs in the...
The rad techs, they're technologists as opposed to technicians. And it's such a sore subject sometimes with them because they have to go to, they do go to school for a long time in order to get their degrees and their knowledge, you know, about what they do. And sometimes these different positions, I think, are important.
really underappreciated. Medical assistants are underappreciated. CNAs are underappreciated. All of the different types of, you know, positions in hospitals, phlebotomists. And I think that we sometimes want to kind of like categorize everyone. You know, it's like, oh, well, you're over here and you're over there. But in fact,
We're all just, we're in healthcare. We all have, we come from different backgrounds. And once you, once you get into your job and you start doing your, your job, whatever that is at your, at that facility, you're kind of learning whatever the policies are, you know, and, and kind of, kind of a learn as you go sort of thing. And then you've got, you know, this background information that you got, you know, when you were in school.
So I just like kind of talking about these different positions. I know there are a lot of people that listen to this that either are in school or maybe really new. And I want people to understand, like, there are different roles. There are different titles. But we're all in health care. We're all part of the same team. We come from different backgrounds. And we're all just colleagues. We just work together. Yeah, it's really you kind of just have to learn. You are one big team working together for this one patient. Yeah.
That's basically what it is. You can't think you're superior over someone because of whatever schooling you've gone through. Or you may have gone to schooling for a completely different thing. Like a phlebotomist goes through a completely different training course than we went through. And we got phlebotomy training, but I am definitely not a phlebotomist, you know? But when we're working together, we are on the same level. Yeah.
Yes, and the same thing goes for nurses. We get phlebotomy training, obviously. And then when we when we're out there doing our job, depending on where what floor we work on or where we're working, we're
We may never actually use that skill and not be able to do it at all. You know, and I worked for years on a progressive care unit and never had to draw labs that we had phlebotomy that came to do that. And I literally did not know. I wouldn't even know what to go get. And none of the nurses that I worked with.
could do it either. None of us, none of us knew how to do it. And if you were in a pinch, you would just literally be calling phlebotomy and begging them to come because we just didn't know how to do it. And then at some point, someone said, well, can I just learn how to do it? Would it be okay? And our nurse manager was like, yeah, absolutely. It's a nursing skill. You have the right to do that. Well, that was a mistake because
Because then what ended up happening is everybody's going to learn how to draw blood. And when phlebotomy can't be here, then you're going to draw, you can draw it yourself. And then it became, you're drawing, you run labs. And I was just like, man, I should have seen that coming. I should have seen that coming. They were like, oh, phlebotomy doesn't have to come up here now. That's great. Yeah. So, but the thing is that if you're not trained in that, if you don't know how to, if you've never done it before, even if you've seen it or you've, you
you know, somehow been loosely trained to do it, maybe in nursing school or, or whatever, you did it on a mannequin or whatever when you're in school. It takes so much practice to be able to do that. And that's literally one skill. There's so many types, different types of things to be done to and on with a patient. You just have to learn it or just ask somebody else to do it, you know, and if it's not, if it's not part of your job description, you know,
Even if it's in your quote scope of practice, if you don't do it, you don't do it. You mentioned earlier about not like disrespecting each other, depending on your title or what, you know, what it is that you do, where you went to school or what your letters are after your name. And
What I always like to remind people that it doesn't matter what your job is. There is always some other position or profession or maybe type of whatever it is that you do that someone would consider quote better than yours or higher or more, more difficult or higher skilled or however you want to put it more educated, however you want to put it. Always. I don't care if you want to talk about nurses or,
You can be a nurse in a doctor's office. You can be a nurse in a school. You can be a nurse on a regular, just like a med surge floor in a nursing home. You can be a nurse in a progressive care unit, in an emergency department, in a ICU. And so there are these nurses that will literally do this, like, I'm higher than you. I'm higher than you. I'm higher than you. Like, oh, well, I'm an ER nurse. So I'm, you know, I have to know everything. Right.
I'm an ICU nurse, you know, so like, and they literally try to put themselves over. But the reality is no one is over that.
anyone else, they are all just different jobs. And you're a nurse that is, you know how to do that job, that role. And if any of these other nurses were put into that role, eventually, they would figure all the stuff out that you figured out too about that role. But I guarantee you, we can pluck you right out of your role in the ICU or the ER, whatever, put you over here in this nursing home,
And you would drown trying to do that job until you figure it out. You would figure it out eventually. So no different than a doctor. When I worked at the hospital with all these different doctors,
They would crack me up because they would get so they would, they would do this to each other, like the different professions, like the cardiologists would look down their nose at the hospitalists, and the neurologists would look down their nose at the hospitalists, or the nephrologists would look down their nose at everybody. Because
Because you really, man, it is so complicated. But they all kind of like literally judge all the different professions. Not, I mean, yeah, they may look down their nose at the nurses and everybody else too, but
more often than not, they're literally pointing fingers at the other types of doctors, because, you know, this cardiologist comes along, and he knows everything about the heart. He knows everything about the cardiovascular system. He knows all those meds and everything that they do and all their interactions and what you're supposed to use for this, but not that. And you can't use these two meds together. He knows all that stuff about the heart. And
But then a neurologist comes along and the cardiologist is making fun of the neurologist for not knowing that stuff. When the neurologist works with the brain and the nervous system, they don't know. They may kind of dabble in the cardiac, but they don't necessarily, they're not up on all the latest. So when I say like,
It doesn't matter who you are, what you do. There is there could always be somebody out there who thinks they know more than you thinks they're better thinks they've got the better initials, you know, or the better, you know, letters after their name, that has nothing, nothing to do with it. Do your job to the best of your ability. And if you want to go do something different,
go do something different. If you want to go to school to learn how to, you know, if you're a medical assistant and you decide you want to become a registered medical technologist, go do that. That doesn't mean, oh, now I'm going to be a better person because of, no, you're just doing something different. It's, so I don't know. I always get on a rant on these things because I get so tired of that whole quote, you know,
you know, pissing contest that people like to do when it comes to their jobs. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly, it's a, it's a pissing contest. It's, I'm, I'm better than you because I know this, but we don't even work in the same field. Mm-mm.
No, no one's better than anybody else. We're all just there doing a job. And you know what you know, because you may have learned it in school. You may have learned it on the job. You may have learned it on your own. So many things I learned because I went home after taking care of a patient and read up on all kinds of stuff, or talk to doctors or talk to other nurses about it. Like, hey, this patient's got this. I've never seen this before. And just like you
You learn from all different sorts of, you know, situations. But the letters after your name, they don't mean anything. Because you could have every degree under the sun and still just kind of like, I don't know, not be very...
I hate to say not smart, because I don't feel like it has, I think it has to do with like, your drive, or you know, your desire to want to do your job really well and know more and, you know, kind of work at the top of your game. And some people, some people can be a little bit lazy and just kind of like want to just sort of like float through and life and apply themselves if you know, they don't have to. But the letters mean nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Although it does mean money because, you know, the letters mean money. You got to give them that. It drove me crazy when I went to working at the bedside as a travel nurse and I worked at this little baby hospital and I would work right alongside LPNs. And I had, you know, I was an RN and working alongside an LPN and we had the same patients. Like they would come in at night. I'd be turning my patients over to them. And I'm like, here's this person and this person and this person and giving them a report.
They're taking the same patients that I had and they're making like $10 an hour less than other people in that position. I don't want to say that me at that time as a travel nurse, I was making a lot of money, but even other nurses, like full-time nurses at that hospital, like other full-time RNs at that hospital,
The LPNs made about $10 an hour less, and they were doing the exact same job. So yeah, definitely money that these hospitals, they will pay, you know, depending on the letters after your name. And that's just, that's just the way, it's just life, you know? Yeah, it's, it's true. It's sad, but it's true. Yeah.
Well, is there anything else that you can tell us about being a medical assistant? Do you like the job? Once you started doing it, I know that you kind of have that honeymoon period. Are you still in the honeymoon phase? Or have you decided, hmm, I don't know, what have I gotten myself into? No, I very much still enjoy it. I enjoy working where I work. I like that not only am I doing regular triaging with patients, but I do get to help a lot with some of the procedures.
So that is kind of the thing that spices it up for me, I guess. Keeps me going is whenever I get to go in the procedure room and do stuff. It's just fun. And the patients we have are, they're great. My first week there, I ran behind because, you know, it's your first week. You're still figuring out your job and doing things. And we had to do urine tests and all of that. And they were so kind and like,
I just, I can't compliment our patients enough because they are, they're wonderful. That's great. That is wonderful. That's sometimes patient population can really make or break you, you know, depending on where you are. Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. Now that I've worked in a kind of specialty practice, I don't know if I could go to like a regular primary care. Cause like the thought of the patients in a primary care scares me after being with these nice, nice people.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how when I go, when I have to go to my primary care, and I see all the patients in in the lobby, waiting, and I think about like,
how people get upset, you know, for having to wait. And then I see some of these social media videos of people like getting so mad because they have to wait and like yelling. I'm just like, Ooh, I don't know. But you know, that stuff happens in the hospital too. So I mean, it happens everywhere. I just, I guess because where I'm working, we're not dealing with colds and things like that. You know, it's just,
just because it's chronic pain, it's completely different because they are sick, but they're not... They're not acutely ill, maybe, as far as... Yeah, they're not, you know, miserable and coughing their lung up in the lobby, you know? So they're not completely miserable when they come in. So they have a tendency to stay pretty happy throughout the entire visit. Yeah.
And I guess they know they're going to get their pay managed. So that's good, too. You know? Yes. And I feel so bad for some of our people, but they are some of the most optimistic and nicest people I've ever met. Wow. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the show and helping us kind of dive into this profession, this health care profession that I think, you know, is a little mysterious. Sometimes people don't always know, you know, so that's kind of cool.
Thank you. You're welcome. I wouldn't mind coming back on again. Absolutely. I would love to have you. And hopefully by then I'll have a little bit more experience in other things too, because we are bringing more procedures into our office and I would love to share some of that fun stuff. So yes, definitely. I would like to have you back on at some point and we can...
kind of dive into some of the pain management stuff, because I've done several stories before on this podcast about
some nurse practitioners and providers getting themselves into trouble because of over prescribing pain medicine and other narcotics. And what I always try to do is remind people that pain is a real issue. It's a it's a problem that has to be addressed with people. And we can't just assume just because somebody's quote, saying they're, you know, like, just because somebody says they're in pain, and they're sitting there scrolling on their phone that they're not in pain. And that
That's the thing about pain patients. Some of the ER, I know the ER nurses sometimes can get kind of judgy, I think about some of their, because it's a very highly stressful job and you get so many different people coming in there. So I loved the idea of kind of like dissecting the whole world of pain management and what does that really look like for a chronic pain patient, somebody who's
literally just wakes up in the morning in pain and goes to sleep at night in pain. And you know, what does that look like to manage that for them? I think that would be great if you'd be willing to do that. Yeah, I would definitely be willing to do that. That would be
I would actually love to do that because there's a lot of misconceptions about pain management. And there are fishy places. There is with any kind of doctor's office. But not all of them are that way. And I feel like it is a very judged kind of clinic to be in.
Well, we'll definitely do that then. We'll have to plan another episode. That sounds great. That's exciting. All right. Sounds good to me. Well, you guys, I always love hearing from you. If you got any feedback for me, you can send me an email at Tina at GoodNurseBadNurse.com. We're on social media at GoodNurseBadNurse. And you can find us at our website at GoodNurseBadNurse.com.
And before we leave, you guys, I always have to remind you, even if you're a bad girl or a bad boy, be a good nurse and be a good healthcare professional.