Egads, that poor child is probably going to have significant scarring around the cuts. Assuming he didn’t get a massive infection that they didn’t bother to get treated until amputation was necessary.

Pro-business/anti-regulation types teamed up with the anti-abortion types around 50 years ago in order to get votes for their unpopular ideas, then they did everything they could to conflate the two ideologies to where Christians (the dominant religious group) now think Republican=Christian=Republican and thus ALL Republican ideas intrinsically align with their religion. I.e., Jesus was a capitalist rather than anything that’s actually in the bible.

Tl;Dr: propaganda and the natural human tendency toward in-group bias.

The iPhone keyboard requires 2 taps for punctuation, including periods. Americans (and iirc especially younger ones) use more iPhones than Android phones (don’t know about other countries, but OP indicated in a comment that they’re in the US). I’m not some old guy saying the youngsters are just lazy, but I do think the iPhone keyboard is a factor in how text-based communication has evolved.

I needed a laugh. Let me know when you publish your first novel; I’ll be pre-ordering it.

Yesterday, at a park, I saw some Patriot Front (a neonazi group) posters on two adjacent polls. One was something about the “American spirit” descending from “European blood”. The other said “America is for Americans”. Without a hint of irony.

As if Europeans didn’t immigrate but just popped out of the ground here, or something?

Racists aren’t known for their critical thinking skills.

So many phones don’t have headphones jacks anymore, and Bluetooth is a bigger hastle than just plugging in a wire. And all the cheap ones use Micro-B instead of C for charging, so now you have to worry about two wires. USB-C/lightning to Aux adapters are unnecessarily uncommon and take the charging port. Same with wired headphones that have a USB-C or lightning jack.

The tech companies have made courtesy inconvenient.

Suddenly realizing the anti-education efforts of the Republican bunch, the Koch’s and all their ilk, is actually motivated by self-preservation. It’s harder to know how to kill your overlords if you never learn about anatomy to know what parts are fragile. For example, you’d never know that cutting the femoral arteries can be every bit as fatal as the carotids, or that when targeting the heart/lungs a knife blade in a vertical orientation would just get caught in the ribs, or that puncturing both lungs would also be extremely bad.

A gut wound that reaches the abdominal aorta very well could be death, but how many people even know where it is?

So, not exactly what you’re asking, but: I worked for 4 years as a psych tech before becoming a nurse, then switched to ED when I graduated. It took a solid 6 months in ED to start feeling like I had any idea what I was doing and not feel like I was in a panic every single day, then another 6 months before I started feeling actually somewhat comfortable. Part of this is because I was a new nurse, and part of it was because ED has a steep learning curve (the orientation period was 5 months iirc). I suspect it would have been an easier transition to ED if I had already had some experience as a nurse on something like a med-surg or cardiac unit. I switched back to psych as a RN and it really only took a few weeks before I was “standing on my feet” as it were, but I already had a good deal of psych experience from being a tech and I wasn’t a new-grad nurse anymore.

What do you mean by dedication? As in time/effort to acquire the necessary skills/knowledge, or emotional fortitude? Definitely oncology and hospice require a lot of the latter, as you and death will become familiar company. ED sees a fair amount of death and it tends to be constant demands, constant action, with days where you wont have a chance to catch your breath. Psych can be soul-sucking at times and tends to be at higher risk of violence from patients, but there’s also a lot less dying or cleaning up of blood and feces. How much dedication a specialty might take will depend in large part on what your strengths are and what you can tolerate or are willing to put up with. I hated ED because of the constant pressure and never knowing what will come through the door next, but I love psych despite often having to work with people with aggression problems and having been hit a few times.

Are you thinking of changing specialties? What’s your motivation? What do you want to do now, and do you have something particular in mind? I suspect the ease of transition will mostly depend on what experience you already have and how much skill/knowledge overlap there is with the new specialty.

Look at the shorter fence in the foreground. It looks like the space between the two fences is probably a line between the properties, and the neighbor did their fence backwards from what you’re imagining, whereas the foreground fence is oriented the way you’d expect.

They are too busy with the laptop to have much attention left for patients.

I’m a nurse practitioner, and can confirm this: I spend at least half of my time tapping away at the computer, checking boxes, and completing often-redundant forms for insurance and regulatory compliance and whatnot. It’s really frustrating, and there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Yes, but to clarify: the time constraints are imposed by for-profit healthcare businesses trying to optimize billable time because insurance will only reimburse for so much time, rather than being imposed by the insurance companies directly. (It’s generally not quite as silly in the non-profit sector.) I work in healthcare in the US: we all hate how it works. The system sucks and it interferes with the quality of care that can be provided, leaving patients worse off just so that greedy can be fed. It’s just asinine that anyone who has no medical knowledge/training is making decisions about how patient care can be implemented, especially where there’s a profit motive involved. We really need to pivot to single-payer or national healthcare system, and abolish for-profit ownership of hospitals.

Same with “associate” or “partner” instead of employee. Garbage nonsense. It’s insulting.

I’m a nurse. We usually recommend at least 350 calories, but ideally with a meal, but it also depends on the medication. For some, it’s to slow how quickly the medication is absorbed and/or reduce side effects, and isn’t necessary for the medication to work (e.g., stimulants, some antidepressants). For others, taking with food is necessary for the medication to be absorbed effectively so that it works (e.g., Latuda, used to treat mood and psychotic disorders).

In my hyper religious, Southern Baptist upbringing, I often heard Christians say that Christianity is not a religion. The mental gymnastics employed to explain this position were varied. Most often it was “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship [with God]”, or something along the lines of “Christianity isn’t a religion because it’s true”.

“Religion” in general was thus deemed a bad thing, because it was a term used to encapsulate all the other (and thus false) faith-belief-philosophy systems that were used by Satan to lead the world away from God. It bears noting that Catholicism and other major denominations always all fell under that umbrella of “other”.

Where can I buy a pair? … No, seriously, I’d wear these.

Last house I rented, when I moved in the dryer lint trap and its housing were so jammed full of lint I could have made a blanket from it. It was astonishing. I don’t think the prior tenants knew it needed to be cleaned ever. I honestly wonder how the dryer wasn’t broken and no fire had started.

The HVAC filter had a solid inch thick cake of dust and dog fur.