Snake Bites and Pizza

Well, the flood situation is over at my hospital. We still have a lot of water, but none of it is on the roads. Hopefully this will never happen again. As if it wasn't enough that we had a monster tropical storm and flooding...that same week AHCA made a surprise visit. AHCA is the Agency for Health Care Administration. As a result - we have a mandatory nursing meeting type thing to review what we are doing wrong. It's a 4-hour meeting...ugh. I'm going to try to go tomorrow afternoon just to get it over with.

The patients that stand out this week for me are the ones that got bitten by snakes. One of them for some reason decided to adopt a rattlesnake he found during the recent flooding. Not only did he decide to adopt it, but he considered it his pet & would play with it. Huh??? Who plays with a rattlesnake??? With their bare hands??? This guy did & sure enough - he was bitten. Luckily he responded well to the treatment and was discharged home a few days after getting bit. I asked him if he planned on keeping the snake...........nope.

The second guy that was bitten....well, let's just say the only people I've seen bitten by snakes have been males. Hmmmm. This guy's children found the snake and this guy decided to try to pick it up. Apparently he did not know what kind of snake it was. The snake bit him on the left hand. What does he decide to do? Call 911? Seek help??? Nope, he tries to pick the snake up with his right hand. Guess what...bitten again. Sigh! Turns out it was a pygmy rattlesnake. He ended up killing it & bringing it to the hospital with him. Apparently he's going to be ok & hopefully he's learned to stop trying to pick up snakes with his bare hands.

On a different note, I had female patient the other night that asked me something no one has ever asked me before at the hospital. She rang her call light & asked to see her nurse immediately....me. It was 1 am and I had already spent the majority of my time in the room with her that evening as she was a very needy type patient. I had given her a sleeping pill earlier and was fully expecting her to get some sleep any time now. So I go in the room & she's sitting up in bed & says "I need pizza now." Ummm, excuse me? She says "I am craving pizza and I need some right now. Can you help me?" Huh??? I looked at the clock & it's 1 am. I told her I didn't think any pizza place would be open this late on a week day. She asked me if I could please call around and find out. I told her I really did not have the time to be calling restaurants, but she was welcome to call or look them up on the internet (she had her own laptop computer in the room). She was ready to start crying...not from pain, but from possibly not getting pizza when she wanted it. I really didn't think she'd find any place still open....but I was wrong. Domino's was open until 1:30 & sure enough - she ordered a pizza. I asked my charge nurse if that was ok...because I've never had a patient order pizza or any other delivery type food while they were in the hospital. She said "We can't stop her." I just had to laugh because of the situation. She got her pizza and was a happy camper after that. Yay!

I'm trying to like the other hospital I work at, but it's tough. There are a lot of similarities as far as charting, but the flow of the place is just very different than my usual hospital. The staff is much different too. I feel disorganized & I don't like that feeling. The team nursing is not really being done even though it's supposed to be. I don't like the team nursing. I prefer to have my own 4 or 5 patients and not have to worry about anyone or anything else. After 5 patients, I find that it's hard to retain any more info. For them to think we can take up to 12 patients and do quality nursing care...well, it's impossible. So the night shift nurses have been splitting the teams/assignments. We're not supposed to, but the charge nurse doesn't seem to mind. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before administration figures it out and either gets stricter or listens to the nursing staff and changes things.

I'm debating about trying another hospital. The downside is that the other hospitals are further away and more traffic which means I'd have to leave earlier to get there and take longer to get home. Plus I don't want to burn any bridges. For now I'll try to give this other hospital more of a chance. I've only been there 3 times...so I will make more of an effort to be comfortable there. All I can do is see what happens. I would like to get into a bigger hospital and get into an ICU training program. Perhaps I'll do that at the beginning of next year.

I'm off until Friday...unless I pick up some shifts. Well, I do have that meeting tomorrow. I think I'll enjoy having the rest of the week off.

Have a good weekend everyone!