Where Does Your Pancreas Live?

So I think I owed all Noodle fans an update on classroom orientation days 3, 4 and 5. Well, mostly they were uneventful and decidedly less dry, which is good. We've begun to do more nurse-oriented learning, so now we've gone over the following topics as per institutional policy: restraints, documentation, organ donation, ethics, quality control, infection control, pain management, MRI, pressure ulcers, patient education and discharge planning, body mechanics, line therapy (as in IV therapy and right atrial catheters), airway adjuncts, code procedures and drugs, and medication safety.

Phew! It was all very interesting, but I did get scared when we started talking about how a code is run and I realized that pretty soon it might be me responsible for running a cardiac arrest event on my unit. I don't really get it, but my training as an EMT didn't really help quell my fears... running a code freaks me out. Oh well, I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Another thing we discussed that I found interesting enough to take notes on was part of the discussion on patient education. The lecturer pointed out that the average American has only about a 5th or 6th grade reading level. As a reference, the Daily News is about an 8th grade level, the New York Times is about an 11th grade level, and to grasp most of the concepts in a PDR (Physician's Desk Reference or Drug Guide), one must be able to comprehend at the college level. Keeping this in mind, the main idea is that we need to make it easy for our patients to understand what we're talking about when we tell them about their diseases or educate them on how to care for themselves once they're discharged.

Makes sense, right? Right. So this includes being sensitive with illiterate (or underliterate) patients, who will make up approximately 27% of all the people I will treat, and teaching those with barriers to learning (like language barriers, plus learning disabilities, hearing or vision impairments, etc.). It seems funny then that since so many people will have trouble understanding medical jargon or complicated illustrations that so many of the patient handouts have a typeface that you need a microscope to read, or are made of shiny paper that has a glare to someone older or someone with glasses. And as the lecturer pointed out, the general population just doesn't know how the human body is wired. So when you're trying to teach about diabetes and want to illustrate/describe the role of the pancreas in the disease, it's important to give references showing where in the body the pancreas is situated. Images of independent or floating body parts don't help, so a picture of the full body with the appropriate organ highlighted is the only real effective method to accomplish this. And to kind of test this idea, we could try it out on normal people-- like, go to a store with pictures of random organs and see if anyone knows what they are. An even simpler idea, as the lecturer pointed out, would be to "go to Shop Rite, turn around to the person in line behind you, and ask them, 'Excuse me, but could you help me out? I want to know-- where does your pancreas live?'"


(floating pancreas = ineffective) VS (whole body + pancreas = effective)

I thought it was actually a really neat idea... until I remembered the kinds of people who shop at the grocery store with me. Honestly, they can be a little aggressive at times. So when I went there tonight, I actually considered attempting that test for about one second. But I wizened up when I looked around and saw that all the woman behind me was buying were huge sections of bloody meat and a couple of whole pineapples, none of which I suspected would feel very good upon contact with any of my body parts. Needless to say, I passed on the opportunity. Perhaps at some point in the future I will conduct that test... but maybe at a fruit stand or something, where the food sold is a lot lighter and nowhere near as sharp.