You'll recall that in my 10/2/05 post, I wrote about Mary. Unfortunately, she has had problems with her wayword teenage daughter, and she took a leave of absence from work. Before she left , she told me about throwing her in a psych unit for a couple of weeks or even disowning her and signing her parental rights away to DCFS (Dept. of Child and Family Serivices) So, while Mary is gone we're oping her daughter is getting better.
Last night, Mary was scheduled to work, but obviously could not so I worked with a nurse, Penny. I was looking forward to working with her, not because I have a romantic interest in her. After all, she is married. (While I have been taken to task for spending too much time with 20somethings once or twice, I won't get involved with married women. (Last thing I need to hear Jesus or St. Peter say to me after I die is "Oh yeah, your the guy who broke up that marriage and the wife had 3 kids.....")
Anyway, Penny is a smart, sharp nurse. I interpret EKGs and measure atrial & ventricular waves on the EKG strip (among other tasks). Ideally, your supposed to measure the waves with an instrument called a calipers. But practically, I use my eyes & can make accurate measurements & it's a lot quicker. Penny always uses her calipers. So, about a year ago, she came up to me because I did the EKG measurements on her patients. The EKG strip is 6 seconds long. Her patient’s strip had 8 heartbeats on it (which is normal) I measured the ventriculr wave at .12 mm, but she corrected me and said it was .14. I looked again & she was right. Now clinically speaking, whether it’s 12. or 14 means very little but the fact that she wanted her patients’ EKG measurements to be perfect speaks well of her.
Penny is a Filipino from Manilla (look out, here comes the nationality tangent!)
Many hospitals in the Metro Chicago area are in neighborhoods (like Maywood & Harvey) where the minority population is about 90%. Yet, among nurses the highest proportion of any minority group is not Blacks or Hispanics/Latinos but rather Filipinos. Why that is I’ll probably never know, but I thought maybe that fact would be interesting to share. They enjoy getting together and speaking Tagalog. Reader, if you have any cogent theories on why there’s such a high proportion of Filipinos work the Chicagoland Hospitals let me know. The reader with the best theory gets $3. No, really!!
Anyway, Penny & I worked with each other for 8 hrs. 11pm-7am since Mary wasn’t there. The first hour was quiet as we interpreted EKGs and did their ventricular and atrial measurements for the 40some patients we each had. I was playing and enjoying listening to Cream, and after awhile she spoke up and asked, "Do we have to listen to that old stuff?
"No" I replied, "What kind of music do you like?"
"I don’t know"
"Well, how am I going to play something you like if I don’t know what you like?" I replied (no response). So I asked, "Do you like Filipino music?"
"Not all of it; I like the ballads"
"Oh, so you like slow, romantic music, right?"
"Yeah, I’m a girl afterall!" she proclaimed indignantly. Then she corrected herself, "Actually, I am in my 30s & have kids." So, I played Jefferson Starship and stayed away from the heavy metal music I love playing. But, I didn’t have any other ballad type of music and played Charlatans UK and U2. I asked her if she knew who U2 was, and she said no. Here’s another ? for my dear readers: has U2 ever played in the Philippines? Now, I can’t offer a prize for that piece of trivia (unless someone wanted to make it a $2 contest for the 1st correct answer). She didn’t mind either band.
The newest interest at the hospital and even, apparently, in the Chicagoland area (apart from the Great White Sox appearing in their 1st World Series since 1959) is doing "Sudoku" puzzles. The tabloid Chicago Sun Times has started putting those puzzles in their papaer and people on the 6th floor like to do them during spare time (guess we’re a boring group).
So Penny & I worked on the same puzzle separately. I started on mine 20 minutes before she did, but to my alarm after about an hour she was almost done. "Damn, Penny, you’re kicking my ass on this puzzle".
"Oh well, I don’t know if my numeric answers are right or not. My husband would be better at this than I, cos’ he’s good with numbers. I only like the ones in my checkbook" she smugly smiled.
"I’m jealous Penny. The numbers in my checkbook suck, cuz’ they’re all red!" But Penny was right about doing her puzzle, because a little later she quit in disgust. (I was able to finish the puzzle). Then we started talking about our kids. I hung up a picture of my youngest daughter (as others put up pictures of their kids and pets in the telemetry room. Like others, she made fun of the way I dressed my youngest, Brianna, because in the picture she’s wearing red striped pants with a pink polk-a-dot shirt. She pointedly asked if I dressed her and told about how she makes her husband change her kids clothes when he doesn’t color coordinate what they wear.
Later, we were getting pretty chummy as she slapped me on the shoulder towards the end and said my patients’ computer screen looked like a "XMAS tree". I was reading but not answering the alarms on my patients’ screen so the screen was flashing 5 or 6 red alarms. Then I sarcastically said, "I guess I’m not as diligent as you are, Penny".
"Oh, shut up" she replied.
So it was a good night. On the night, it’s important to keep alert because it’s a severe punishable offense to be asleep at the job 3:30 in the morning. & obviously, it’s not a good way to take care of the patients. So we were glad to find a new strategy (Sudoku) to stay alert and awake during our graveyard shift and called the night a success.
7 comments:
Kids play Sudoku here too! Most of them are losers though (or just not me. Same thing). My only guess about the Filipino thing is that opportunities given to them might exceed those given to other ethnic groups, or that the medical field has more traditionally been occupied by that minority group than by others. I'm sure it's location-specific though.
Alright, heres my shot at the 3 dollar challenge, to defend conservative honor.
First off, Filipinos have very high adult education levels- the average adult in the Philippines receives 8.2 years of schooling according to UNESCO- that is higher than France, Spain and Italy.
Education is emphasized in the family, too, creating a work ethic that continues in American immigrants from the Philippines.
Samuel Huntington says that Filipinos have an easy time transitioning to life in the US because English is one of the two official languages, because they are generally well educated, and because the Philippines has had a great influx of American culture over the last 40 years, making approved lifestyles not that different.
In addition, they are a relatively stable democracy, and a catholic nation, making the transition easier than from countries like Japan, the Middle East, India or China.
I would bet each of those things factors into the number of Filipino nurses in Chicagoland Hospitals.
Also, the Chicago area has significantly lower high school and college graduation rates than the rest of the country, which likely could draw in the well educated from around the country to fill jobs such as hospital positions.
in order not to let mine conservative compatriot hoard all the glory to his own name, i too will venture a guess at this perplexion.
1st- chicago is a big city, so there'll be lots of immigrants there to start with, jsut as in any other american metropolis
2nd-another similar instance is of tech support being more and more outsourced to places like india. like ian said, we see more and more countries catching up to the western world in terms of education, etc.
3rd-and this is the most specific answer, i think its a sepcific aspect of philippino culture that leans towards being specific, skillful and methodical, evidenced by her using the calipers all the time.
i dont know, its a tough question, but there's my shot at it.
Tomorrow, I will announce the winner, HOPEFULLY if I'm not too tired when I wake up from the 3rd night shift I work in a row. I work from 6:45 pm -7:15 am at a hospital in suburban Chicago.
Now I know L12 knows about it, but Trevor and anp_ccs_7, if you want to know what I do at the hosp. you can let me know.
Well everybody, I said after 12:00 noon, so I'm keeping my word. Charlie you were not too late; good observation about the Hmong population. WHen I lived in LaCrosse, WI for 4 years (by the way I student taught @ LaCrescent High School in MN in the spring of 1987) which is where I got my Bachelors Degree.
L12 got to the heart of the matter when she stated that hospitals do, in fact offer minorities like Filipinos, opportunities that they don't find in other fields of work.
However, the facts and anectodes cited by Trevor and anp_ccs_7 were impressive. I am awarding anp_ccs_7 first prize with a consolation prize going to Trevor. Trevor I like reason #3 because you applied an anectote to the information I gave you about Penny to give your answer as well as providing certain societal facts.
However, I was very impressed with Ian because he researched an impressive array of facts/statistics especially from UNESCO, and I never even knew that about Filipinos!!
Nice job, everyone! Excellent work Ian and Trevor. Please provide your mailing information either on my e-mail listed in my Blog Profile or provide in the "Comments" box if you want to tell the world.
Thank you very much Vince. The fun of the contest is more than enough of a prize for me. Save the money for another good question
i appreciate your comments on my observations and my consolation prize, but i too would say along with ian, i'm in it more for the competition.
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