This lame picture that I found in a 5 second google search does not do the proud white board justice. When I first came to big inner city trauma center I was excited to see that they still used white boards (and paper charts...oy vey!) They got phased out in a couple of years with a more advanced tracking system and virtual tracking boards on pc's that roll around the area.A true grand white board hung at the front of the emergency room tells a story of a bad night in a city. It's all there the results of the human drama that occurs in a twelve hour period. In my early days as a baby ER tech I vividly remember the wall phone beside the white board with what seemed a 20 foot long cord. the phone seemingly attached to the charge nurses ear. if you could decode the medical jargon you knew EXACTLY what was going on with every patient in that department within seconds. Never was the phrase uttered "wait a second let me pull up the board" Tell a doc something and they'd glance at the board and in a second they knew what was going on with a pt.
If you stood in front of a board for too long you'd get some object thrown at you and something said to you along the lines of "move your ass I can't see the fucking board"
One color name would mean one thing and another color circle would mean another. In fact although the old white board was pretty ubiquitous in every ER there are subtle differences from hospital to hospital. It was ALWAYS the best way to communicate with co-workers. Because EVERYONE from housekeeping to the CNO and CEO of the hospital could see the board. Everyone looked at the board. I know I said a million times "WTF?! don't you read the damn board?!" It's all there no ands if's or buts and not putting a status change or a admit on the board was inexcusable.
Some charge nurses were crazy about the boards. One I worked with would line by line at the beginning of the shift, would change all the writing to her own which always got me to change random letters in her writing during the shift. We'd play the BAC game during night shifts on weekend nights or rookie nights where when we'd find out a pts. BAC we'd put it on the unused portion of the board add the totals up at the end of shift and whoever guessed the cumulative total would either win the pool or we'd all chip in and buy breakfeast for them the next morning.
Other games played one was a personal fave was trying to land a white board marker onto the holder at the bottom of the whiteboard. It's a lot harder than it seems. During lulls in action the staff (and docs) could spend a few minutes throwing a marker or two up there for soda money or until the charge nurse got up set and ran us off.
Sometimes when the charge nurse was not around I'd make up patients with bizarre complaints based off of TV. Which got the charge nurse looking into the (rare) empty room asking "Where the hell is the pt with the (crazy complaint) at?"
Then there were the never ending abbreviations specific to a certain hospital:
CLB: crying little bitch (usually the tough guy with a tummy ache)
WADAO: Weak and dizzy all over (a personal fave)
BS or BGL: get a blood glucose level
HBD/SBD; He or She be drunk
+ S/S: positive Samsonite signs meaning pt has a shit ton of luggage with them
That's just a few I remember off the top of my head and of course we'd use the local ten codes for EMS for other things.
The whiteboard knew all and rarely no matter where I have worked was it totally empty. Alas things have changed. With the advent of tracking boards on PC systems there is no real central system for everyone to gather and discuss department strategy or a place where you know if you hung out long enough you could find most anyone in the department or at least leave a note to tell them something. Now things are tracked in real time in a computer system so we know numbers and it makes us more efficient. It does to a degree, all these fancy whiz bang systems you can find pt info in a flash gone is the lo-fi system that gave true character to any ER. I liken it to the diffrence between mp3 and the old vinyl records. Both do the same job it's just vinyl records has more of a "feel" to it, same for the old white board.
At big inner city trauma hospital we've lost the whiteboard and the paper charts a few years ago (thank heavens we don't have paper charts anymore!) The old gigantic white boards are still there for general info but not like the old days. The old white boards stay primarily now for "down times" which either scheduled or unscheduled is when all of us old hands do a little dance and happily scribble on the white board and strike nostalgic. The younger docs nurses and techs get frustrated by the whiteboard and often don't understand the joy of such a simple device. The old whiteboard in many ways was the equivalent to the water cooler in cubical land. Yet vastly different.
I miss the whiteboard, at times I look at them and wonder if in a small way if the whiteboards don't miss us too.
