“Always check your equipment before getting started.”
It doesn’t just apply to central lines or chest tubes. It also applies to that delirious 90 something gentleman who just won’t seem to listen, who keeps getting out of bed, who just says “Huh?” despite you yell-speaking, who spits out the nitroglycerin every time you drop it into his mouth, who just wants to get lunch with his six kids in 1992 and gosh darnit just won’t listen to how we’re all under quarantine and he’s at the hospital in 2020.
Not that this is why your patient is delirious – but it certainly helps make life easier. Because “always test your equipment before getting started” also applies to making sure that the words that are coming out of your mouth are reaching the hypothalamus of the recipient. Somewhere along that chain is a hearing aid, and you better damn make sure it was charged overnight.
The Rootlets 