Could this be why?

Y’know something’s wrong with our system when 5, yes, count ‘em, 5 Zofran ODT cost $102.  And the only way Medicare will pay is if the patient is on chemo.  That tells me something is really amiss.  It ain’t right.

Possibly the worst part was that my mother-in-law, the one who is nauseated, told the ER doc that phennergan doesn’t really work for her, instead of the other way around.  So he writes for 5 ODTs.  Thank you very much.

Guess I’ll still be asking for them to dilute my dilaudid with phennergan!

Your Money, Well Spent

Yes, it is cliché to blame high drug prices on all of the marketing materials that the pharmaceuticals hand out.  But it is so easy.  Observe my haul from the conference I went to over the weekend.

The watch is mine.

Just the pens:

Sell out?  Corporate whore?  Money-grubbing swag monger?  Naw, the wife bitched at me the last time I went to a conference about the relative dearth of pens I had snatched, so I tried to make up this time.

As for educational content the conference was great.  Somethings were way over my head, others I could actually follow and possibly even incorporate into my practice.  Plus I snagged some cool imaging stuff that I haven’t had a chance to dig into.  Hopefully soon.

For All the ER NUrses out there…

Oh yes…”Top Ten Reasons People Use to Get Pain Medicine Early“

Is that all you have? I’m sure there are more/better than that…

This sparked a reminder of someone on the floor lately…how they are still breathing I have no idea: Dilaudid PCA @ 4mg/hr w/4mg on demand q15minutes (max of 24mg/hour), 2 fentanyl lollipops q6 (a better invention I have never seen…mmmm…narcotic) and up to 100mg Phenergan IV q4. I also think there were prn Dilaudid orders on top ofthe PCA, but I could be wrong. Now do remember…1mg of Dilaudid is equianalgesic to 7mg of morphine – in other words, max. dose of Dilaudid via the PCA is like 168mg of morphine and hour. And yes, they were still breathing. The PCA pump though was a bit worn out.