Ok...this post has gotten a bit more heated than is probably needed.....hrm that rhymes....
Right...back on topic (I saw a squirrel). There are many valid points here, along with a fair amount of hostility. I'm going to start at the top, however, and this will be a long post, so bear with me.
First off:
Bring back the rectal temps for everyone young and old, make and give suppositories for all medication or at least the option, Bring back the large volume enemas, and get everyone use to getting injections in the ass not just the arm.
Ok - I get this point. Rectal temps I tend to disagree with, but most foreign countries sell suppo forms of many drugs (paracetamol is one I can think of off the top of my head), that I would prefer to take over a pill. That being said, Mashie is right - many drugs would not work in rectal form. They need to be absorbed in different places, and rectal administration only gives the opportunity for absorption in the lower colon.
Enemas are also probably underused, though not necessarily without reason. As Mashie again wisely points out:
FYI, again enemas are not always the best option, nor are they always a safe option. They are also very time consuming for the nurse. Giving a large volume enema to a patient is a good hours and a half of work on one patient. I have anyplace from 15 to 50 patients in my care depending on what kind of nursing I am doing, critical care/ rehab, or long term. Do I have time to spend 90 minutes doing one treatment? Hell no I don't.
While enemas are sometimes a good idea, they are not always the correct approach (in the '50s, we thought they cured everything from the common cold to TB....), and even when they are, they are very time consuming compared to oral, or even rectal laxatives (hey, they do still sell both glycerin and bisacodyl in suppo form).
And yes, shots can be given in the ass, but sometimes its quicker, faster, and more comfortable to get them in the arms. I'm sorry, but I'm not up for pulling my pants down at the local flu clinic to get my flu shot, that really doesn't hurt at all, and takes only 5 seconds to do in my arm. Some shots ARE better in the bottom, and I agree with both Mashie and guy, they should generally have the equipment to do that on hand if the patient requests it, but in many cases, I can understand why they do not.
As far as rectal temps go - there are VERY few medical indications for a rectal temp. In fact, there are very few medical conditions where a forehead temp, an ear temp, or some other bullshit way of quickly and only semi-accurately reading a temp isn't good enough. I have worked in a hospital, and believe me, if I had to turn everyone over every 4 hours to stick a thermometer in their ass for 5 minutes, I would get NOTHING done. EVER. And patients would generally dislike it. Most people, that is. Especially when all the nurse cares about is "Do they have a fever, yes or no", because they are just looking for signs of nosocomial infections. There are, in fact, cases where adult rectal temps are actually indicated...and I've done it more than once. But for your sake, I hope none of you on the forum ever ends up in any of those cases - believe me, you will be so far beyond enjoying it.
Your doctor is not there to cater to your inner fantasy world.
This has been stated so many times on this forum - real medicine is not play medicine. While in the play world, rectal temps are (almost) always called for, enemas are a front line treatment for every illness imaginable (and I say imaginable, considering that play medicine has, in fact, a 100% effectiveness score at treating imaginary illness, but a very low effectiveness at treating real illness), and injections are painful, frequent, and always in the bottom, that just is not the case in real world medicine.
Let's face it America has gotten too prissy about medical taboo
America is it's people. We live in a capitalistic democracy (or at least, we try very hard to pretend we still do - but that's a topic for another forum). Mashie again hits the nail on the head well with:
we medical professionals do not actually dictate how we handle and or treat our patients, our patients do.
If patients wanted paracetamol suppos, pharmacies would sell them. But they don't. I understand this to be the point of the original post, but it's not something that is likely to change. People want what they want....and again - MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT FETISHESTS. Most people would much rather take a pill than shove something up their butt. There is no demand for suppos, so they are not sold. Ranting about it is not likely to change this.
True but I think it is prolly way too late to go back to this. Let's say I walk into the doc's office tomorrow and I need my temp taken they first take me to the general coral area where everyone can see you get your temp taken by ear weigh in and bp and o2 read. Then you go back out and wait in the waiting room or you go back to the room. So, they make it vary hard to get a rectal temp out of them unless you are a kid and really young one at that. Then, once in the room if you strip down you are just standing there naked in a room no gown anymore unless they instruct. Oh, and if you need meds they coral you out the door and say your meds are waiting down in the pharmacy so it is not just our faults... So give the patient some credit. Gosh, I knew people in the medical profession tend to have the all mighty complex but this is nuts. Some Doc's and nurses need to get off their high horse.
The complaint that medicine is gotten overly impersonal is another common one. But again, it's what the market wants. Doctors, in order to make money, need to have a very high throughput. Insurance companies want the lowest prices. People are in a rush. Want this to change? Yeh, so do I. But ranting about it here doesn't do much. Especially since this is a MEDFET forum. We are here to talk about the FETISH of medical scenes, not the ACTUAL medical world. Not that I'm trying to discourage discussion of other ideas, but even IF we were able to rebuild a medical system featuring more personal and accessible doctors, better prescription drug policies, etc...it still wouldn't be anywhere close to your fantasy medfet scene. I personally would be quite upset if my real doc strapped me to the table and took my temp in my ass....that would be highly unfortunate. And I'm about as medfet built as they come. Those two worlds are separate places.
"once bitten, twice shy"
Agreed - litigation reform needs to happen, in a number of areas...but again...talking about it on a medfet forum...extremely ineffective.
People think that whatever they read on the internet is true, and nothing is farther from the truth.
This is because people are, I find, generally less educated than they ought be. Again - topic for another forum, but agreed.
Hey Guy, I gotta be honest with you, I don't like anyone dissing my country. While I am a bit biased, I still believe we live in one of the best countries. I don't know what flag you respect, but my American flag still stands for freedom and needs to be respected. So many of our boys gave their life for this right. Remember our forefathers came forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equally well over 200 years ago. Together they wrote probably what is the worlds greatest documents, which still holds true today. Our soldiers and founding fathers gave you the right to speak in places such as this. They need to be thanked and respected. Dissing what they worked so hard for is absolutely disgraceful.
Our American soldiers fought and died in the revolution to resist the control of an foreign, unrestrained monarch, so that provocative, new ideas of freedom and democracy might flourish. Our American soldiers fought and died in the civil war to resist the enslavement of millions, so that the provocative ideas of freedom for all might flourish. Our American soldiers fought and died in the world wars so that our provocative ideas might be safe from the tyranny of idealistic fascist movements like the Nazis. Our men and women fought bravely and died honorably so that we might have the RIGHT to question ourselves, our society, and our government; so that we can progress and prevent one popular idea from dominating and excluding other ideas. We are given the right to vote, it is our responsibility to use it, in what way we chose. We are given the right to speak, it is our responsibility to use it, again, in what way we chose. Ideas are not always popular. Ideas are not always good. But the foundation of our society, of our government, of America itself, is that the people have the RIGHT to question, in any way they chose, including in provocative discourse, that others may or may not agree with, their society and their government, and to attempt to deny that goes directly against the ideas that our soldiers fought and died for. While I agree the topic name is perhaps strongly worded, and would probably not have worded it the same, had I been its author, I CANNOT fault the author for bringing the topic forward, even if I did not agree with some or all of it, even if I thought the ideas to be incorrect, even if those ideas were questioning of some parts of our society. By saying that the American way of life gives us the freedom and responsibility to express our ideas, it does not mean that only popular ideas should be expressed...it means ALL ideas, and the concept of attacking unpopular ideas, just because they question facets of our society to see if we could perhaps better it, as unpatriotic I find highly offensive.
And for the record, some parts of America DO suck. The lower Bronx generally sucks. South Phoenix...sucks. The fact that uninsured people in America are often denied the best care, sucks. The fact that many insurance companies refuse to cover mental health care, sucks. The fact that many prescription drugs cost an order of magnitude greater in the US than anywhere else in the world, due to various factors, including the patent system, which was designed to protect and reward innovation and is now being used to harm it, sucks.
The idea that all of America (or any other country for that matter) is absolutely pristine and perfect is one I'm sure no one on this forum will put forward....and I find it, therefore, incorrect to ask anyone not to question it, even if one disagrees with the point put forward.
So that's my post. I know it's long. I know it's likely to offend some people (as always, I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone here). I know it's probably feeding a continuous rant. But at the same time, I am posting it....and, as much as I had the right to make this comment, I encourage everyone to comment on it.
Best of luck all!