You Can't Polish A Turd…

…alternatively titled “AD Lays The Smackdown On A Snurse Manager.”

Snurse = Stupid Nurse, in case you were wondering.

For the past two weeks, I have been teaching classes every day I haven’t been working, which explains the dearth of posting over the past five days. Fatigue, coupled with not seeing KatyBeth nearly as often as normal, has had me totally drained.

I’ve been so tired that even the prospect of sitting nekkid in the beanbag chair, watching Skinemax and eating Cheetos hasn’t seemed appealing.

So the Cranky Switch was set on HI this weekend for the PALS class I was teaching. To make matters worse, my lead instructor’s truck went Tango Uniform one day prior to class, another instructor’s Mom had a heart attack, and that left your humble scribe teaching Pediatric Advanced Life Support to 16 eager students all by his lonesome.

*sigh*

Now all it takes these days to teach an American Heart Association class is a brainstem and an index finger to push the PLAY button on the DVD player, but I still like to, you know, teach during those moments when they allow us to pause the Boring and Absurdly Simplistic(TM) video and discuss things.

Normally, with the appropriate cadre of instructors, I’d have broken the class into three or four smaller groups to cover the material. Small groups make for better discussions and interaction anyway. Unfortunately, aside from about three hours generously provided by the Ex Missus, I had them all in one big conference room.

Now I’m a fairly entertaining speaker. I can hold the attention of a few hundred people and get my laughs along the way. I can usually draw even the shyest, most timid new nurse grad into the discussion, or pique the interest of the grizzled dinosaur who has taken the same class ten times before…

…except for that one person, the one that doesn’t want to be there.

Those people generally fall into the category of Turds. They tend to stink up the entire class.

I have an educational philosophy that simply states: You Can’t Polish A Turd.

Any attempt at polishing will only serve to smear feces on you and the rest of the class. Turds should be flushed, and quickly.

This particular Turd was a nurse manager for a med-surg unit at Nearby Big Hospital. She was being required to take the class for work, and didn’t see the utility of knowing anything about pediatrics. Her unit doesn’t do kids, but the class was required of her for one reason or another.

To top it off, she was forced to travel an hour or so to take the class at Podunk General Hospital, Nail Salon, Tire Repair and Crawfish Hut, rather than take the pathetic exercise in rote memorization quality class typically offered by her own facility.

And when she gets to class (ten minutes late), she discovers, much to her chagrin, that the whole thing is being conducted by a – *gasp* – Ambulance Driver!

I recognized the Turd stench the moment she walked in the room, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I am not one of those Old ACLS Biddies who likes to walk into the room and imperiously announce before class begins, “Some of you are not going to pass this class!”

Oddly enough, the majority of Snurse Educators I’ve met believe such statements to be an excellent motivational tool.

So throughout the first couple of videos, I tried to ignore the Turd’s not-so-whispered conversations with her neighbors. I even ignored the bored and disinterested expression and disdainful looks she gave to her classmates whenever they tried to contribute something meaningful to the dialogue. I tried all the commonly used tactics they teach you in those superficial little AHA instructor courses about how to engage the Bored Advanced Participant.

Problem is, she was definitely bored, but she certainly wasn’t advanced, and calling her a participant stretches the definition of the word.

I played nice, right up to the point she started casting those disdainful looks and sighs in my direction. I can deal with the fact that her facility made her come against her will. I can commisserate that they’re holding her incentive pay as ransom.

But one does not exude an air of intellectual superiority to this Ambulance Driver, particularly when he is trying to teach you something, because unless you are a pediatric intensivist or a grizzled PICU nurse who has been there and done that, I can almost certainly guarantee that I know more about the subject than you.

So I got medieval on the heifer.

AD: “Snurse Manager, why don’t you expound on seizure management for the class? I’m sure you have something to add to the discussion. Tell us the clinical presentation of a patient with complex partial seizures, as opposed to say, simple partial seizures or tonic-clonic generalized seizures.”

Turd the Snurse Manager: “Huh?”

AD: “I’d like you to share your experience with the class. What’s the difference between a simple partial seizure, a complex partial seizure, a generalized absence seizure, and a generalized tonic-clonic seizure?”

TSM: “Uh, what happened to grand mal and petit mal seizures?”

AD (rolling eyes and sighing): “Timid New Nurse Graduate (who had been paying attention), educate your colleague.”