In your ankle??? Surprise, that's not best practice! Unreal. We have policies against that, maybe if you were coding. We had a hematologist I adored, he was Columbo, heart of gold. He could get a line in anybody, just not in approved sites. Our director would flutter around daily, "get the lines out of Rooms blah, blah and blah. I mean it, Frank, NO MORE!" And his patients really did need a line. So he ambles in at 10p (hardest working man I ever met, rounded twice a day and had an office full of patients. He practiced alone, did all his on call because no other hematologist would ever follow his plans. His neighbors called the police because he would mow his lawn with a headlamp on after his late night rounds. He was so sad, he did not get why the neighbors weren't happy he was getting it done.
He had a very hard to find sense of humor. So one night he goes, "am I putting a line in so and so?" I kept looking down at my work and said no worries, it was in. "Really, where?" "left side of nostril, I had to work fast with the tourniquet around his neck. But boy, did those babies pop!" A lot of his patients were young, (hemophiliacs at height of AIDS crisis who were going to die, leukemics and back then, they somedays stayed for weeks in to months) so they were my age. I loved the guy we did the nose IV on, we came up with the idea, I put so much tape over his nose, no one could see it was not an active line at all and I fake hooked it up to an IV bag. He goes in, comes right back out, "good idea but Pat will chase me for weeks about this, take it out, ok? nice try!" He thought I had put an IV on someone's nose??? What? I said, "can you even put an IV on the side of the nose?" "Sure but you cannot put the tourniquet around their neck, don't ever do that again. Seriously, don't!" Who the hell would think I did that??? "Frank, good news/bad news. Good news I did not put a tourniquet around anybody's neck. Bad news, he need a line." Finally, he laughs.
I hate the days of hospitalists and PAs rounding for specialists, it feels like no one has any idea of the big picture, except start planning their discharge right after you register them as patients.
