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Military Medical Corpse Picture Gallery


Official sign posted in Andrews AFB FP clinic: Stop! Only authorized personal (sic) are permitted in this section


If you have hilarious pix of Military Medical Stupidity, e-mail them to webmaster_AT_medicalcorpse_D0T_com; by doing so, you give me permission to post them here with my brutally honest commentary as I see fit.

 In order to serve you worse: New, restrictive hours for Andrews MPF

Ahh, the MPF (and Finance, and the Disorderly Room, AKA the Commander's Lack of Support Staff [CLOSS]): Doing what they do best, with shamelessness: restricting hours of support to harried active duty members who don't have the time to make appointments, whose duty days start at 0700 or before (not 0900), and who get justifiably frustrated when told by a two-striper to come back another day, because the member doesn't have an appointment to get a critical piece of military business taken care of.

 In order to serve you worse: Minimum Manning at the Andrews MPF

Didn't we wish we could close the hospital for surgeries and OB care when we were "minimum manned" between, oh, August 2001 and when I left in June, 2005?

"Sorry, we can't do your appy right now; there's only one anesthesiologist on duty to cover the whole hospital; please use our handy self-help kit in the main lobby. Step One: Alcohol prep. Step Two: Use sharp scalpel on your abdomen. Step Three: Scream to your Deity of Choice for the merciful release of Death, given that no anesthesia care is available at this time, due to minimum manning. So sorry. Better luck next incarnation. Step Four: Stay *away* from the bright light and beckoning deceased relatives...that's an order, Airman!"

 Doing What We Do Worst..With Ignorance.. (two dots sic)

Plaque at the entrance of the 89th Air Wing Military Personnel Flight Office, Andrews AFB, MD. It has been there for many years. No one noticed.. (sic) or evidently cared..(sic) that ellipses have three dots, not two. Our Air Farce Mottoe (sic): Yesterday's illiteracy tomorrow. For more on the proper use of the ellipsis, see here.

 O2 regulator with picture of stork holding baby...what's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture? Click here to find out, then come on back now, y'hear?

 Mandatory Fun Run...ya, right!

Ah, yes, mandatory fun...how I miss it!

Don't you feel more secure knowing that this LtCol doctor (not me) has a certificate proclaiming his successful completion of USAF I%%%%%a%%%% Assu%a%ce A%a%e%ess 2005- ZYAF0115? Well, don't you, punk? A competent organization would have issued a certificate labeled "Information Assurance Awareness", but that's too much to ask of the 89th Medical Group, given that a tech-illiterate nurse was made the commander of the IT section. How do I know she was tech-illiterate? See my book for details.

A full four years after I first got a career-ending Letter of Reprimand for insisting that we not commit surgery on a 9 year old child and then send him to an adult ward, Malcolm Grow's illustrious post-op Ward 2H STILL freaks out whenever they are tasked to care for children...sans pediatric nurses, sans pediatric-trained techs, sans inpatient pediatrician coverage, sans, well, everything they would need to provide quality perioperative care for kids. You see, after Dec 2001, the command magically designated the Adult Medicine Ward 2A to be the combined Adult and Pediatric ward...that would have been nice, had they actually hired humans capable of providing pediatric care (they called anesthesia for blood draws and IV starts on kids constantly, because the staff "didn't feel comfortable" doing so). IN THE END, it was all moot: the impending MAPPG-06 cutbacks meant that the "Combined" ward was closed in early 2005...leaving behind only the "Adult" postop ward 2H...

Yet another hand-lettered sign warning parents that the Malcolm Grow system is incapable of caring for kids, due to lack of appropriate physical security to keep tykes from wandering off while the nurses buff their OPRs or engage in mandatory Computer Based Training while caring for many non-pediatric patients as well. NOTE: This is not intended as a slam on the humans unfortunate enough to be assigned to Ward 2H at Andrews. It is the entire U.S. military medical system's fault that untrained folks are being tasked to work beyond their level of competence, merely because the military is TOO FRICKING CHEAP to hire actual pediatric nurses, pediatric-trained technicians, and pediatrician physicians who are willing to leave their cushy clinics to provide actual inpatient pediatric care on the wards. Instead, Family Practitioners pretend to be pediatricians, with anesthesia on call 24/7 to do all the hard stuff that doesn't involve typing progress notes into the computer (ivs, blood draws, pain management consultation, intubations, etc.).

 

Water leak on the 5th floor, Malcolm Slow Mediocre Clinic (the command section, no less). Of course, it was worse when the ceiling of our post-op recovery room collapsed due to water damage during the middle of a work day in 2004...luckily, no patients or staff were hurt...and I thought the Bush administration didn't tolerate leaks!

 

Sure we have "freedom of religion" in the United States Air Force. Take your pick: Protestant informal or protestant formal. Of course, Chapel 795 on the far side of the base might have some other religious service...but we all know what belongs in CHAPEL 1.

 

Right behind Malcolm Grow "Medical Center", you can walk through the gardens of our religious retreat, er, well... Remember, your tax dollars are at work on FEDERAL property to promote the dogma and parables of one religion over all others, so just fricking deal with it.

 

Posted at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. No matter your what? Note the official stamp of approval in the lower left hand corner. YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS AT WORK promoting religion at a federal military facility yet again.

We offer a variety of supportive books from many religious traditions to support you while you wait for your loved one in the O.R. waiting area at Malcolm Grow Superclinic.

Your tax dollars paid for this official religious propaganda. Note the reflection of the author with his trusty cellphone camera.

 

My Texas Aggie and ex-Flight Surgeon Flight Commander and Chief Anesthesiologist, who is barely literate in non-Texlish, saw fit to attempt to correct my grammar on an Officer Performance Report (OPR). Oh, the indignity! Now, let me get this right: I am supposed to change "collected" to "proceeded or evaluated"? Bbbbbut I can't change "collected" to "proceeded", because it makes no sense; and my anesthesiologist colleague didn't really "evaluate" the medical records per se, so my integrity prevents me from lying about it...however, I can't ignore the OPR suggestion, or it will just come back around YET AGAIN with more mindless corrections by morons...Norman, please coordinate! DOES NOT MEET STANDARDS!

 

The original sentence went something like this: His efforts in educating and preparing self, flight to fight Global War on Terror raised the bar high. Note that OPR-speak allows this bastardized use of the English language, so that every single bullet point EXACTLY fits on one and only one line. However, my not-so-bright Flight Commander wanted me to change "flight to fight" to "flight-to-fight", as in "fit-to-fight", which would be totally inappropriate in the context of the sentence. However, I must admit, my "fight or flight" reflex was activated thousands of times during my 19 years in the Air Force...after fighting the good fight for patient safety, and receiving nothing but reprimands and gray hair as a reward, I decided that FLIGHT was my only alternative.

Heal, I say! Is it any wonder that the new (2005) 89th Air Wing Commander's name is "Pray".

These poor trees were left out above ground for weeks in early 2005 before the idiots in charge got around to having them planted in our "Good Samaritan" park. By that time, many had died. Every day I would drive past and grieve...yet, by that time, I was so embittered, I didn't feel like spending hours finding out who was responsible for this maltreatment of living organisms. So many humans were being left out in the figurative (and literal) cold due to policies at Malcolm Grow and Guantanamo, it seemed to be just one more evidence of neglectful ignorance...

How I mis the Commisary! The rotting fruit, the stale veggies, the gray meat, the interminable line that snaked back and forth and back and forth, paying the old ladies to carry out my bags, even if I didn't want (or need) them to...Also, I think that ONE AIRMAN must have had some psychiatric problem to collect all that junk (hint: it should be Airmen's Attic, ya maroons!).

Res ipsa loquitur.

At the 89th Air Wing's Illustrious Military Personnel Flight, on the day of my final outprocessing, 30 June 2005. Tell me again what the motto of the Air Force is...that's right: Yesterday's Technology Tomorrow. After all, our brave pilots are still flying B-52 bombers that were designed (and sometimes built) in the 1950s! Aside: As a computer person, I must point out a major reason for the computers at Andrews being down all the time: SPYWARE. As of the day I left the Air Force, they were still allowing O.R. techs to download massive music videos, along with all SORTS of malicious software that compromises national security to this day. When I personally pointed this out to the nurse commander of Systems at MGMC in 2004, she just shrugged and stated: "I'm really not much of a technical person; I don't know anything about those things." In order to make the nurse anesthetists' computer in our break room work, I had to pay my own money, using my own credit card, to buy a registered version of an anti-spyware program to kill the dozens of malware instances that were rendering the computer inoperable. I'm sure that was against the rules: how dare you use your money and expertise to further the mission!

Service before self. After all, President Bush has demonstrated that the "Geneva Convention" is like the asparagus you see on the plastic packages of frozen fish: more a "serving suggestion" than an actual requirement. Definitely not that important...especially since deploying troops mandatorily have to have these cards, often on short notice...

I wish we could schedule appendectomies between 1500-1600 on alternate Wednesdays on months with a blue moon and a neap tide...

The Air Force allows nothing but the best technology in its operating rooms.

 

You just have to remember that there is no sterile ortho spoon.

Yes, Virginia, I was not the only one who found Andrews to be a hostile workplace environment. This picture was taken in the cubicle of an airman working for the 89th Medical Group Commander's Lack of Support Staff (CLOSS), Malcolm Grow Clinic, Andrews AFB, MD during my outprocessing. For a more legible version of this Christian preacher's rules on "How to Work in a Hostile Environment", see here. If you want to buy his book, "Ten Commandments of Working in a Hostile Environment", go to the bottom of this page and click on the secure link. No, no one paid me one red cent for including this link.

Is it too much to ask that the "hospital" provide scrubs to its surgeons and anesthesiologists, so that we don't have to go to the OR "skyclad" (buck nekkid)? Sigh. Typical Monday...and Tuesday...and Wednesday. Well, let me go to to the ICU to get some blue scrubs...after all, they always come in and steal our scrubs en masse...

Sigh squared. No extra large scrubs in the ICU either. I guess I'll just have to go pass gas naked today...So much for "Excellence in All We Do".

 

Good news! The 89th Medical Group Quality Assurance section decided to put a box on the wall where you can submit clinical "near misses" you witnessed...but, where's the box? It's obviously not on the wall...

 

Oh, of course, there it is, on the floor...where it remained for weeks until someone finally re-installed it. It doesn't matter in any case: no one cares about near misses in Air Force Medicine. Even Sentinel Events get swept under the rug of bureaucratic ass-covering, as my book documents.

 

As I was leaving in May, 2005, my female colleague was tasked to take over my "additional duties", which included Education, Peer Review, and, of course, my Quality Ass (no period). I jokingly advised her to lodge a formal Social Actions complaint against her boss for belittling her in a sexist manner...but everyone knew he was functionally illiterate, so he had plenty of character witnesses available to attest to his witlessness.

(more to come soon!)