I'm a nurse at a hospital and I generally get along with my co-workers OK. I'm the youngest nurse on the ward and the only male, and so I think my style of working is pretty different from everyone else. I said that to say this; one of the nurses I work with really lost her shit tonight. I mean she was pounding on the table and screaming. What shocks me the most is she's usually the quiet one.
At one point on my shift tonight I was in a patients' room drawing blood with the curtains drawn when I heard the other patient in the room shuffling and grunting. I asked him if he was ok and he said, "I need help." Now, he was talking and therefore breathing and he wasn't screaming for help, and I was bent over the first patient still filling a syringe full of blood and unless it was a dire emergency I couldn't just stop what I was doing to see about the guy behind the curtains. So, I asked the patient I was working on to use his call light to get us some help.
OK now a little history on me and call lights. I am of the opinion that they should be answered right away. I work on a med-surg unit and very many of our patients are very sick. At that hospital over the 7 years I've been there I've participated in about 10 cardiac arrest "code blue" situations. Probably 99% of the time patients use call lights for anything from extra mayo for their sandwich - which doesn't absolutely need to happen in an acute care context - to a request for pain medication which isn't an emergency, but for the sake of being merely humane should be attended to as rapidly as possible. Then there's that rare (even on an acute care ward) call that someone makes when they can't breath or when they start bleeding profusely that is indeed an emergency and should take presidence over anything else going on at the moment. Ok 99% of the time non-emergent, 1% emergent and we as nurses never know which it is until we actually go and answer the light. Me, I don't quess which it's going to be. When I hear the light go off if I'm not at the bedside of a patient already I look up to see who's light it is. If it's my light and I'm doing ANYTHING that does not involve direct care of one of my patients I'll go and answer the light. If it's some one elses patient's light I'll give it about 30seconds and if I don't see someone headed that way I'll go and answer the light. I'm kinda fanatical about it actually. Maybe it's a kind of OCD? None of my co-workers are quite as fanatical about it as I am, some of them are so completely un-fanatical that I have watched them amble right by a room whose call light is on, or I have turned a corner to answer their light just to see them reading a newspaper in the hallway just a few feet from the room whose light is on. I have stared at them while they play solitare on the computer while a light is going off. I have asked them to answer their own lights just to have them retort, "let me finish this one chart first." I find this kind of behavior both annoying (because very often I will go and answer lights for other people) and distressing. A lot of the time the actual patients also find this behavior annoying and distressing as well, but they're sick and can't always get out of bed, and anyway a few soothing words from a nurse once they do finally arrive is usually enough to placate them, especially if it wasn't really an emergency (99% of the time) anyway. I however have a pretty good idea of what's going on with my co-workers and I'm not quite as easy to bullshit.
So...
I ask my patient to put on his light so we can get some help for the fellow in the next bed and I try to finish the blood draw as rapidly as I can. In about 30 seconds I have the patient's blood, but I still have the mess to clean up when I stop, draw the curtain back and see that the other patient is struggling to use the urinal and making a mess of himself, his bed, and the floor around all of us. NOT an emergency right? Just some fat old man who can't piss straight. For some reason the sight of this man working to maintain his dignity coupled with the mess I had now behind me and the fact that the call light had been going off for almost a minute with no reply really upset me. I walked out to the nurses station to see the ward clerck staring at her computer screen and another nurse looking at some papers in her hand standing behind the desk. At this point I say something completely useless and dramatic like, "I guess you guys can't here the damn call lights anymore huh?" and storm back into the room (useless, pointless drama and not very clever anyway). The ward clerk looked up at me and said "what?" and the nurse looking at the papers didn't react at all, but kept reading. I get back into the room and leave the guy pissing on himself and the floor to his own devises because there are sharp needles in the first guys bed and a blood specimen that I have to lable. It is at this point about a minute and a half after my patient first turned his call light on and less than three minutes away from permanent brain damage that the ward clerk uses the intercom to ask me "what kind of help did you need?" I snapped at her and said, "never mind" (more completely useless drama). I finished cleaning up the blood draw mess just as the old fat man finished peeing when in walked the nurse who had been reading papers behind the desk. She asked me, "what do you need?" I told her to never mind too, and I told her that I wanted to talk with her when I got done, "but not in front of my patient." (what is the term for using my patient as an audience by not wanting to use them as an audience?)
off to bed...more to follow...
Monday, Sept. 18th 11am:
So, where was I? Oh yeah, the beginings of a tantrum...
I finish cleaning up and walk back out to the nurses' station. The CNA I was working with finally comes around the corner and so I start in on everyone within earshot with things like, "This isn't the first time guys, anything could be happening in there and you guys don't pay attention." I get a few bullshit excuses from them like "oh, I always answer my light." (do they forget I work with them 40+ hours a week??) and "well it wasn't an emergency." This was the kind of lame ass crap I was expecting so I got even madder and escalated the situation by threatening to "write it up." Absurdly what I meant was that I was going to write up the whole ward (and even after a night of sleeping on it if I could figure out how to write up everyone without it being a joke I would), but the nurse that was standing in front of me took it that I was going to write her up and her alone. We went into the break room to talk, but it was all one way accusations and posturing and instead of calming down both of us were getting more worked up. Right about this time I realized that things had gotten too heated so I stepped out and tried to go back to work, but the nurse I was talking to now kept ranting at the desk, "what does he expect?! I'm so busy! He can get his own urinal!" She kept on and on for a couple of minutes and of course this got me even more angry so I called the house supervisor. She came up and she and I went into the break room and I calmly explained what was going on including the fact that I was upset and had gotten this other nurse particularly riled up. That's when she came into the breakroom, but instead of sitting down to talk she started thumping the table and raising her voice.
Off to work. More to follow.
At one point on my shift tonight I was in a patients' room drawing blood with the curtains drawn when I heard the other patient in the room shuffling and grunting. I asked him if he was ok and he said, "I need help." Now, he was talking and therefore breathing and he wasn't screaming for help, and I was bent over the first patient still filling a syringe full of blood and unless it was a dire emergency I couldn't just stop what I was doing to see about the guy behind the curtains. So, I asked the patient I was working on to use his call light to get us some help.
OK now a little history on me and call lights. I am of the opinion that they should be answered right away. I work on a med-surg unit and very many of our patients are very sick. At that hospital over the 7 years I've been there I've participated in about 10 cardiac arrest "code blue" situations. Probably 99% of the time patients use call lights for anything from extra mayo for their sandwich - which doesn't absolutely need to happen in an acute care context - to a request for pain medication which isn't an emergency, but for the sake of being merely humane should be attended to as rapidly as possible. Then there's that rare (even on an acute care ward) call that someone makes when they can't breath or when they start bleeding profusely that is indeed an emergency and should take presidence over anything else going on at the moment. Ok 99% of the time non-emergent, 1% emergent and we as nurses never know which it is until we actually go and answer the light. Me, I don't quess which it's going to be. When I hear the light go off if I'm not at the bedside of a patient already I look up to see who's light it is. If it's my light and I'm doing ANYTHING that does not involve direct care of one of my patients I'll go and answer the light. If it's some one elses patient's light I'll give it about 30seconds and if I don't see someone headed that way I'll go and answer the light. I'm kinda fanatical about it actually. Maybe it's a kind of OCD? None of my co-workers are quite as fanatical about it as I am, some of them are so completely un-fanatical that I have watched them amble right by a room whose call light is on, or I have turned a corner to answer their light just to see them reading a newspaper in the hallway just a few feet from the room whose light is on. I have stared at them while they play solitare on the computer while a light is going off. I have asked them to answer their own lights just to have them retort, "let me finish this one chart first." I find this kind of behavior both annoying (because very often I will go and answer lights for other people) and distressing. A lot of the time the actual patients also find this behavior annoying and distressing as well, but they're sick and can't always get out of bed, and anyway a few soothing words from a nurse once they do finally arrive is usually enough to placate them, especially if it wasn't really an emergency (99% of the time) anyway. I however have a pretty good idea of what's going on with my co-workers and I'm not quite as easy to bullshit.
So...
I ask my patient to put on his light so we can get some help for the fellow in the next bed and I try to finish the blood draw as rapidly as I can. In about 30 seconds I have the patient's blood, but I still have the mess to clean up when I stop, draw the curtain back and see that the other patient is struggling to use the urinal and making a mess of himself, his bed, and the floor around all of us. NOT an emergency right? Just some fat old man who can't piss straight. For some reason the sight of this man working to maintain his dignity coupled with the mess I had now behind me and the fact that the call light had been going off for almost a minute with no reply really upset me. I walked out to the nurses station to see the ward clerck staring at her computer screen and another nurse looking at some papers in her hand standing behind the desk. At this point I say something completely useless and dramatic like, "I guess you guys can't here the damn call lights anymore huh?" and storm back into the room (useless, pointless drama and not very clever anyway). The ward clerk looked up at me and said "what?" and the nurse looking at the papers didn't react at all, but kept reading. I get back into the room and leave the guy pissing on himself and the floor to his own devises because there are sharp needles in the first guys bed and a blood specimen that I have to lable. It is at this point about a minute and a half after my patient first turned his call light on and less than three minutes away from permanent brain damage that the ward clerk uses the intercom to ask me "what kind of help did you need?" I snapped at her and said, "never mind" (more completely useless drama). I finished cleaning up the blood draw mess just as the old fat man finished peeing when in walked the nurse who had been reading papers behind the desk. She asked me, "what do you need?" I told her to never mind too, and I told her that I wanted to talk with her when I got done, "but not in front of my patient." (what is the term for using my patient as an audience by not wanting to use them as an audience?)
off to bed...more to follow...
Monday, Sept. 18th 11am:
So, where was I? Oh yeah, the beginings of a tantrum...
I finish cleaning up and walk back out to the nurses' station. The CNA I was working with finally comes around the corner and so I start in on everyone within earshot with things like, "This isn't the first time guys, anything could be happening in there and you guys don't pay attention." I get a few bullshit excuses from them like "oh, I always answer my light." (do they forget I work with them 40+ hours a week??) and "well it wasn't an emergency." This was the kind of lame ass crap I was expecting so I got even madder and escalated the situation by threatening to "write it up." Absurdly what I meant was that I was going to write up the whole ward (and even after a night of sleeping on it if I could figure out how to write up everyone without it being a joke I would), but the nurse that was standing in front of me took it that I was going to write her up and her alone. We went into the break room to talk, but it was all one way accusations and posturing and instead of calming down both of us were getting more worked up. Right about this time I realized that things had gotten too heated so I stepped out and tried to go back to work, but the nurse I was talking to now kept ranting at the desk, "what does he expect?! I'm so busy! He can get his own urinal!" She kept on and on for a couple of minutes and of course this got me even more angry so I called the house supervisor. She came up and she and I went into the break room and I calmly explained what was going on including the fact that I was upset and had gotten this other nurse particularly riled up. That's when she came into the breakroom, but instead of sitting down to talk she started thumping the table and raising her voice.
Off to work. More to follow.
urblueygrl:
I so hear you... it sucks sometimes being the one dependable one working. I use to get that alot where i use to work at. Hope it gets better for you..
sexybeast:
But... where do the naked women come from??? 