Last Updated on: 24th April 2014, 07:01 pm
Ug the news. Sometimes it pisses me off. I’ve already bitched about the lameness of some news stories, but the story I saw tonight brought lameness to a brand new low.
Ok, the story was that some coffee-consumption could help prevent colon cancer and would help your liver, but drinking too much of it would cause you to get other cancers. They then said that children and pregnant women are strongly advised against drinking coffee. Um, duh! Do we need this stated again? What a waste of time.
And it gets better. The World Health Organization, you know, the body that tracks epidemics and the containment of these epidemics, said that we have a one in ten chance of being the victim of a medical error if we are hospitalized. And here were their three big pieces of advice for doctors and nurses. Get ready for these, these pearls of wisdom will knock your socks off. Can I have a drum-roll please? They are:
- Double-check the names of similar-sounding drugs.
- Wash your hands frequently,
- Use needles only once!
and the scariest of all,
Are you gasping? I hope so. These nice reporters must be telling me that these are things that doctors and nurses don’t already know and use as well-established practices! Was I transported to the third world without knowing it? I’m scared that the WHO felt it necessary to remind doctors and nurses that they need to check meds, wash their hands, and throw away used needles. The first one, I can half understand happening rarely, like in an insane shift where you barely have time to breathe and stuff just keeps happpening. but this apparently happens frequently! Yikes! Ug I need to know what hospitals they visited so I can never wind up in one of them. Sometimes the news frightens me, but not in the way you’d expect.