You know what type of healthcare providers StudentFNP can’t stand? As an RN and as a patient you see them all the time. You know the ones. They come into a patient’s room, barely even look the patient in the eye, listen to one side of the lungs only, place the stethoscope on the chest long enough to look like they’re doing something, but not long enough to actually hear a freaking heartbeat. And forget telling them about any health concerns you may have.

A patient in his 20’s came in today for a regular physical because, thanks to Mr. Obama, he can now afford to go to a provider. Yay – win for the ACA! (although, my conservative friends and family don’t think so). While completing the history and physical, everything seemed peachy. Annual physical? Peace of cake!

Until it came to talking about the balls.

Patient casually mentioned that he had a hard lump in one of his testicles. Young male in his 20’s… testicular mass. The patient was concerned and rightly so. StudentFNP doesn’t have balls (oftentimes figuratively too, but we’ll get to that later) and hearing the words ‘mass’ and ‘testicle’ in one sentence scares her! The patient said that the last time he had a physical, the physician told him “Oh, don’t worry about it – it’s nothing,” and just waved it off sans an actual physical assessment or imaging. Together with PreceptorFNP, an ultrasound was ordered and guess what, the results came back with the words “possible malignancy” among a slew of other crappy and abnormal findings. So, a urology referral was given and the patient was sent off to a specialist to figure out what to do about a problem that should have been addressed long ago.

StudentFNP knows that she’s still learning and in the world of primary care she’s just a little baby. However, she knows that what the previous provider did was wrong.

See, those types of providers make StudentFNP really, really mad.

StudentFNP hopes that she never becomes like that. Ever.