There is no such thing as a silly question!

Let me tell you a story...



I was a nurse with a few years of experience under my belt when I moved to San Francisco. I was promptly hired at UCSF, which was, and remains in my experience, an excellent hospital. UC, because of its excellence, is a center where patients with many of the more exotic and hard to treat conditions are sent for care.

On one of my first days on the job I was getting report from a nurse; I don’t remember much about her and don’t know that I ever interacted with her again. She was passing along information about a patient who would be under my care for the upcoming shift. This little guy had an unusual illness with a long complicated name, no doubt named after the folks who discovered it. For the purposes of this post, and since I have long forgotten what it was, I will call it Hughie, Dewie and Louis disease. Here is the thing - this wasn’t something that I once knew and had forgotten. I had never, ever heard of it. Not even a glimmer of an idea.

“ So, Your patient X has HDL disease...These are his orders”

“Hold on a moment, What is HDL? I am not familiar with it.”

There was a pause and maybe a sneer

“You haven’t ever heard of HDL?”

I imagine that this was my opportunity to get a bit shame faced and say, "Oh! HDL, of course" and continue to get the report, but I don’t work that way. One of the things I respect the most in a person is to be comfortable with what they don’t know. Now, it is easier than ever to get educated. This was long before the days where I could pull out a phone and simply google it. This was now a game of poker. Some of you may not know, but Nurse Judy plays poker in Vegas.

“I have never, ever heard of it. Can you please tell me a bit about it so that I can take better care of the patient?"

She doubled down, I think she had come too far to save face and was hoping I would cave first.

“How long have you been a nurse? Where have you worked before this”?

“Is there anyone here who can tell me a bit about HDL?”

There was a resident sitting there who was happy to tell me all about this very rare condition. EVERYONE in the break room was hanging onto every word. Is it possible that no one had dared to ask? That was an isolated case at UC, but I carried the lesson along with me.

If I am talking to a parent and they are confused about a dose, a diagnosis or anything, the LAST thing I want is for someone to be embarrassed that they aren’t “getting it” and accept the information without clear understanding.

No one knows everything. As parents this is a good lesson to pass along to our children. Being comfortable enough to acknowledge what we don’t know and learning how to find the information we seek are important skills.