What is your random skill / knowledge that you know because of your job?

[FMyUterus]

Inspired by a TikTok trend (humour me I'm
in hospital with no visitors for the foreseeable and it's really boring/ hard)

Mine are;
Shaving foam will help get rid of sticky poop if it's everywhere

The heart will beat alone in a bowl for about 10 mins after being removed from the body.. that's creepy to watch

You can live without a pulse for many years, we now have devices and pumps that take over the function of the heart so the patient has no pulse but as long as their battery is fully charged they can live for many years, i met a patient the other day who had had their Left Ventricular Assisted Device for 11 years!

disclaimer I'm a nurse but give me your random facts / snippets of knowledge, you don't have to say what you do

Hmm..I know the lyrics to too many Stormzy songs and am far too able to translate teenage slang for a woman heading towards 60.

I also know Rasputin's penis is kept pickled in a jar. I have seen it. (Ra ra! Russia's greatest love machine).

@FredtheFerret you win that's amazing! 😂😂

My current one is so boring (I've spent the last 9 years just... Knowing a lot about mortgages) but in my old career:

• knew a lot about the best places to find sex workers in my town
• how best to inject steroids
• and which needle size suits which drug

(Drug & alcohol addiction treatment services, in a place which also ran sex workers and IV steroid users outreach clinics)

I teach A level Russian History. 😂 but I do like a random fact. (And a gruesome object). I'm telling you - you can Google Rasputin's penis but some things cannot be unseen...

P.S. whenever I heard about LVADs (not often, granted), I just think about Grey's Anatomy 😂

What training you need to enter which Canadian mines!

@yelyah22 I though the lvad in greys anatomy was fiction until I started here also since we're talking random shit we've seen on greys anatomy that's real.. I saw a heart in a box last week and was so excited to tell DH because we're rewatching greys! Didn't ask it anything though ..

@grassisjeweled that's amazing!

Oh my god FMyUterus that's amazinggggg! But are there any doctors that look like Jackson Avery? Hahaha 😏

@yelyah22 no they're all middle aged men and I struggle to recognise them without their masks on

@FredtheFerret why is it kept in a jar??

At one point I could name the UK’s 100 largest housing associations in order of size and tell you how many properties they owned. Left the sector so mostly long forgotten. Housing associations have since changed and I have since gotten invited to more dinner parties 👍🏻

How very repulsive some older men’s testicles are........

As a truck driver, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the cafs in my area that serve a good brekkie.

...although sausages and Rasputin's penis are probably two things that should not be contemplated concurrently.

Ooh I found my people I used to work in the LVAD space too and met a patient on pump for 10.5yrs! Hmm interesting skill/fact from my job. The absolute importance of Translational research - so much time, money and brain power goes into clinical trials for innovative solutions but unfortunately little is done with the knowledge obtained. A commercial team must then take the reigns to get the product out to market but this very rarely happens.

About 40% of people wash their hands after going to the loo. Of these, more than half just splash some water around, but no proper clean.
A common consumer problem with tinned soups used to be people cutting their mouths when drinking cold soup straight from the tin.
Cola in baby bottles for 1-3 year olds isn’t that rare.
Most bathrooms are a lot cleaner than most kitchen counters.
I do observational consumer research.

The heart will beat alone in a bowl for about 10 mins after being removed from the body.. that's creepy to watch

And if you keep it washed with certain chemicals it will continue for hours.

In line with the OP

Your heart rate and pulse are not the same thing, A and E nurses often take the numbers on a monitor as a pules, but they should actually find a pulse.

It is possible to have a normal ECG but no cardiac output (ie tamponade).

Most medical terms are greek or derived from greek so if you read a discharge letter in Spanish, French or German you will understand the patient's diagnosis even though you don't know the language.

Unfortunately this is more difficult with Japanese or Russian.

The man who discoveree xrays tested them on his wife repeatedly and her hand fell off!
Much safer nowadays as dose is very closely regulated!

Discovered*

@malificent7 I don't know why but that made me laugh

I know all postcodes for the uk.

I have never worked in a lingerie department but my random skill is that I can correctly size a womans breasts, and it’s very rare for women to be wearing the right bra size.

Most people are slightly (or very!) asymmetric, one shoulder will usually be higher than the other, one buttock bigger than the other etc, and very few people stand up straight even when asked to- they’ll lean to one side or hunch their backs. Or worse, they’ll lock their knees and then faint after a few minutes!

If you have a knot of almost anything you can’t undo, twist the ends as you push them into the knot to help loosen it before trying to pull it apart.

Not as thrilling as a pickled penis but quite useful!

I'm sorry I had to google it .... look away now if you don't fancy it ladies ..

I know that a vehicle's catalytic converter is so expensive and so readily stolen because it's chock full of platinum & palladium to help neutralise harmful exhaust gases.

The sales of suspension springs can go up by more than 2/3rds in the colder months due to their high carbon graphite content, which while giving structural rigidity in temperate months, will struggle to perform once brittle- if already damaged or weak. If you look at a section of broken spring you can often physically see the shards of carbon graphite shining within the steel.

Many safety components in your car (airbags, seatbelt pretentioners, fuel pump cut off) are controlled and operated by nothing more complicated than a single steel ball bearing. (Inertia switch)
Beautifully elegant.

I could bash on all day...