Comment by technobabbler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by technobabbler | Hacker News Reader

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Yep. According to the article she accepted the blame and acknowledged her mistake.

But there were also a bunch of systematic factors contributing to the error. The UX stuff was actually buried very deep in the article, I just thought it was an interesting part of healthcare that's rarely discussed.

The medication she administered was in a different form, even (powder instead of liquid, like kool-aid). But that still didn't stop the mistake.

Everyone in healthcare right now is exhausted all the time, understaffed and overworked, and enough small errors can accumulate into major catastrophes. Didn't seem like there was a process in place to prevent this, either in software or training or day to day.

She's not trying to avoid responsibility, but also, should she get prison time for a mistake vs losing her license and job? And who else in the chain of command should be held responsible? How will this ripple across the healthcare industry?

We have a hard time filling nursing positions already, and the other nurses interviewed for the article all worried the same could've happened to them.

I'm teaching a nursing chemistry course right now. There's a certain kind of character who sees the course not as an opportunity to learn but as an obstacle to overcome on their way to make a living. We are trying our damnedest best to weed those out.

What has happened is this: nurse tasked to administer Versed. Versed - what's that, don't care. <goes to medicine cabinet> VE-clickedy-click. Vecuronium? Dunno what's that, but it's good enough. Big warning! Medicine be dangerous! Medicine is administered, patient dies. Nurse says, mistakes were made, but Jesus loves me!

Enough of that.

> There's a certain kind of character who sees the course not as an opportunity to learn but as an obstacle to overcome on their way to make a living.

You might be surprised to hear that most people you know are doing what they can to make a living.

It seems like you may not see it that way, while instead making a moral judgement of who “really cares”. I understand your sentiment, but I would advise caution in such situations.

You can want to make a living, but also have a personality where you care why, and how things work. Where you are fascinated with the universe, and seek to know more.

Some jobs are simply not for those whose personailty does not mesh.

Another example would be an introvert, taking a job as an MC. Not the best fit there.

I understand your viewpoint, but even as an engineer who thinks that I care about figuring things out - oftentimes I don’t as well. It’s all really dependent on my personal/mental well-being or even systemic situation/pressures. My point being that such traits are a spectrum and can vary over time.

And you feel this way when someone could die if you get it wrong?

GP is not talking about the nurse which got it wrong, by accident, but about those that clearly are going to have difficulty doing the job properly. There's more to a job than cramming info.

Are you trying to tell me, if you were a teacher, and you were to pass or fail a student who you knew would end up unable to perform, you'd just say "Oh well, hope they get better!", and pass them?

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. I think you've misread the GP's statement.

> exhausted all the time, understaffed and overworked

That's precisely what they want, they want to be understaffed and underworked to create the myth of the suffering heroic doctor, so that they can justify all the other privileges they get and the gigantic salaries, bribes from multi-level marketing, and disgusting hedonistic trips to the Caribbean.

There's good doctors too and guess what? They're hated by mainstream doctors. I love those guys, they're so good.

If doctors were actually good the absolute first thing they would instantly do is allow there to be ten times as many doctors, that would make everyone in America much healthier instantly.

These guys are like Google, but a pentillion times more expensive. In fact one time I went in, I started talking to the doctor, he just started googling right in front of me.

Not sure at all what you are talking about. This is about a nurse, not a doctor. The difference between the two (especially in pay) is vast, nurse != Doctor Jr.

Nurse practitioner yes, pretty much a doctor. Better actually, means less prestigious, which means better.

What do you mean if doctors were good they would allow ten times as many people to become doctors?

That's not how it works. The process of becoming a doctor is much more formalised than you seem to insinuate and mostly does not depend on a single individual or a group of individuals other than indirectly.

I do agree that some doctors have a Messiah complex and are self-important to the point of absurdity, but they still mostly tend to do a good job.

I would argue that the limiting factor of why there is a general shortage of doctors and nurses is that the job is not the easiest one, physically or mentally, people tend to work long hours and awkward shifts and the education itself is challenging and long.

> tend to work long hours and awkward shifts and the education itself is challenging and long.

Both of those are professional masochism. In particular older doctors make sure would-be doctors and young doctors go through decades of shit in order to keep the old doctor's privileges and salaries incredibly high, without making it obvious it is a completely cornered market. If doctors could, they would close the medical schools. But they know they would get lynched by a mob, for real, really in real life, the laws against it would stop nothing, so they have no choice but to leave medical schools open producing a symbolic number of replacements with an excrutiating amount of hazing and harmful education, which very much makes them worse doctors. And lots and lots of attrition, the old doctors love that, mmm attrition, all the benefits of saying there's slots in medical schools without the actual competition from petulant young doctors.

> If doctors were actually good the absolute first thing they would instantly do is allow there to be ten times as many doctors

They also want every doctor to be minimally competent and that goes completely against the goal of having as many doctors as possible, or, better, highlight the fact that this is how many doctors (or healthcare professionals) we can have considering cost of education, both monetary and in time.

If you really want more doctors, you could also pay software engineers and lawyers less. I was married to a doctor and I know how much she studied to be one. It's much easier to become an average software engineer or lawyer than becoming an average doctor. And you wouldn't want to meet an average doctor right after totalling your car with you inside. Changing the financial returns would make the profession more attractive to those who are in the game for money.

If I could make what I make counting squirrels in my backyard, do you think I'd think twice before leaving software engineering? ;-)

Was mostly talking about nurses and other hospital staff, not the doctors. Sorry for being unclear.

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