A Sign of a Real Engineer

So, my #1 son, 19, was in the hospital for surgery. (Nothing life threatening, but one of those Must Be Done things).

He's coming out of general anesthesia, still woozy, and the nurse is explaining the patient-controlled morphine thing. So there he is, half conscious, absolutely _grilling_ the nurse over whether the ten-minute timeout on the thing is ten minutes after the last time the button is pressed, or does the gate open at 11:10, 11:20, etc.

All complicated by the fact that it took the nurse several tries to understand that he wasn't anxious about getting his meds -- he just had to understand how the thing _worked_.

And "let it go, son" doesn't work well when he's fully awake -- there's no hope of it working when he's in that state.

Finally, he fell asleep. We were all relieved.

Needless to say, he's entering an engineering program this fall.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott
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So, tell us! Which is it? :-)

Tim

-- Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. Website:

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Reply to
Tim Williams

Bwa-ha-ha-ha... Hope he feels better soon!

--
I'm never going to grow up.
Reply to
PeterD

AFAIK, it's 10 minutes from (last) push. At least the ones I've seen do it that way.

--
I'm never going to grow up.
Reply to
PeterD

Sounds like a chip off the old block.

;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

A few hours later the nurse comes back in, the Swiss army knife is on the night stand with the Philips screwdriver segment out, and the back of the timer control is off ... :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

"Tim Wescott" schreef in bericht news:uvKdnaelD-p3rHjSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@web-ster.com...

Well, if that nurse explains it the right way at once the question should not even arise. Most people still woozy would not care but some has that drive to want to KNOW as long as they're not fully unconscious. There's no help possible. It's something genes I suppose. :)

petrus bitbyter

Reply to
petrus bitbyter

lf

He's got... The Knack! Oh no!

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Michael

Reply to
Michael
[...]

Hmm. So does that mean that because of the extent to which technology has invaded medicine the old adage of doctors being the worst of all patients will now apply to engineers, as well? Nurses beware!

Reply to
Hans-Bernhard Bröker

lf

Nowadays that would be updated to "Sounds like a chip off the old wafer."

Reply to
spamtrap1888

'A slice off... ...the ol' superpurified ingot.

Reply to
TheQuickBrownFox

The one my brother had while he was waiting to die from cancer had a variable timer and dosage, set by the staff, of course, that started counting down when the button was pressed. When it reached zero, it stayed at zero. When it was zero, you could press the button, get a dose, and reset the timer. While he was still lucid, he used to take it as a challenge to see how long he could put off pushing the button after it got to zero.

And a bit on Embedded programming, I watched the staff setting this thing up, and grumbling the whole time. I asked one of them about that and she explained that the set up bore no relationship to how medication instructions were written, and demonstrated what she meant. And I remember thinking, that this thing was designed by an engineer who knew pretty much zero about how someone might actually use it.

- Bill

Reply to
Bill Leary

A splice off the old recombinant DNA.

Nick

--
"The Internet, a sort of ersatz counterfeit of real life"
	-- Janet Street-Porter, BBC2, 19th March 1996
Reply to
Nick Leverton

The one 'big' (< 500 people) company I worked at, for most of the time I was there, basically discouraged sales from talking to engineering, and wouldn't let engineers talk to customers at all.

There was a thaw for a while, but it didn't last.

So if that company followed the same policy, it would certainly explain the results.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

By the time he was up to doing something like that, the IV was out.

Besides, his mom was with him.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

The nurse was baffled by the question. I, my wife, and my sister in law were all in the room and knew exactly what he was asking.

So the two engineers and the MD in the room understood the question, but not the nurse.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

That is what we all are. The splicers will likely return on the 21st day of the 12th month of this year. About 180 days from today, in fact.

Reply to
TheQuickBrownFox

That is a recipe for disaster. I bet you are glad that you are no longer there.

At both of the companies where I worked as an employee the engineers worked with the customers (medical) a lot, witnessed system use by the customer, and so on. They were also available at trade shows. It's pretty much the same with my clients and that's how it ought to be.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Reply to
Joerg

500 people is still "small". ;-) The large companies (100s of thousands) that I've worked (and work) for do a pretty good job of listening to customers, though certainly not every engineer is customer-facing. Of course the "customers" are other large businesses, so...

The small company I worked for had a stronger firewall between the engineers and the customer. Only two people were allowed to discuss the customer's needs; the owner and director of technology (engineering didn't even report to him). They have a nice product but I think it's going to be a one-trick pony.

Ought to and reality don't meet all that often.

Reply to
krw

alf

d
s
.
w

The nurse knows that the patient controls when to administer the dose, subject to the minimum ten minute wait between doses. She couldn't make sense out of the question because she knows that the patient doesn't have to wait at all for the first dose.

Reply to
spamtrap1888

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