Just a quick anecdote -- and an alarmingly true one. My father endured 5 separate surgical ablations of the interior of his bladder over 4 years in an attempt to stop a form of bladder cancer that attacked the interior surface tissue like a bad case of fungus. He even had his bladder irrigated with irradiated TB in an attempt to clean up the cancer; sort of like fighting fire with an nuclear weapon.
On his third or fourth visit to the hospital I was sitting with him when a male RN came into his room to change a balloon catheter. In the past, I'd noticed that the catheters inserted in my dad's urethra seemed about half the circumference of a garden hose; far too big for me to feel comfortable to look at. The male RN removed and then inserted a second balloon catheter that was probably 1/4" in circumference. I pointedly asked him why all the previous female nurses had inserted catheters so much larger than the ones he was using. His immediate response was: "Because they can."
From his answer I quickly understood, that while not all RN's are Nurse Ratchets in white orthopedic pumps, many older nurses are tired, overworked, and need long vacations. Therefore, they may or may not consciously take out their frustrations on the patients in their care. However, nursing is a damn hard profession and one that does not get the respect (or pay) that it deserves. Still, after having brachytherapy a year ago thanked my urologist/surgeon for being so kind as to use a small balloon catheter after the procedure just before he yanked the tubing from my rather clown-sized dick. His response was, "What are you talking about? There's no medical reason to use such a larger catheter." I told him exactly what I've written here and his response was, "Ah, yes, Americans. They tend to overdo things, warranted or not."
