Monday, June 28, 2010

Out with the Old...

It's a new week...feeling soooo much better than last week. Nothing like having 5 days off to make one forget what they deal with at work. I didn't do much of anything. I did attempt to clean my closet. Well, the closet is looking great, but my bedroom has everything all over the floor that I don't want to put back into the closet. So the bedroom is a disaster, but the closet looks mahveloussss...lol.

I go back to work tonight. It's my orientee's final week before she's on her own. I feel a little bad for her. She tried to match her schedule to mine for next month & they gave her only like 3 days out of 9 that I am working. She's afraid to be without me, but she'll be fine. I felt the same way when I was coming off orientation. I'm also starting tonight with a new orientee. So out with the old, in with the new.

I like having orientee's, but the first week or two is kinda rough. So much to show them & they have so much to learn. I have been lucky - the orientees I've had so far have been pretty quick learners. I'm hoping this one is the same. We'll see.

Hope everyone had a great weekend & stay cool in this hot, hot weather (it's over 100 degrees here in FL...ugh).

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

What in the World?

What a strange shift it was last night. I don't know what is going on this week, but we seem to have every alcoholic around walking into the ED drunk & wanting a room. As if it's a hotel or a shelter. And they admit them...every time. I certainly didn't go into nursing to babysit drunks. And I'm not talking about drunks who have decided they've had enough of drinking and want to stop. No, all they want is to leave as quickly as they came in so they can resume their lifestyle. Only we can't let them leave because now 3 days later, they are detoxing, confused & not a whole lot of fun to be around.

One of mine almost escaped this morning. I'm not kidding when I say his hand was on the door of the stairway to leave the building. Whew. Close one. And wouldn't you know it's when I wasn't the last one in his room when the bed alarm went off every 15 min. Whoever it was, they forgot to reset the bed alarm...thus the reason he was nearly able to get away. Luckily he was pleasantly confused & walked back to his room with a little bit of coaxing. All while dripping blood up & down the hallways because he pulled out his IV. Did I mention all of this went down around 6:40 am...right as the change of shift was starting to happen.

The one good thing about that.........makes me very eager to go home. And so very thankful my work week is over until next Monday. I have no ill will towards these unfortunate individuals. I try to understand what led them to where they are today & they all have a troubling past.

What I am a bit resentful towards is that this isn't nursing. And it's not so much this incident...in fact it's hardly got anything to do with it other than for a few seconds I think about what if he did leave & no one had noticed? What kind of liability does that put on me? Ugh, don't want to think about it too much. Too scary.

It seems more & more that the hospital as well as the Joint Commission or maybe the hospital is changing simply because of the Joint Commission & all of their changes/requirements/b.s as well as Medicare. Whatever it is, it's not nursing. It's not what I was doing 5 years ago as a nurse. Certainly I can't be the only one that has seen how much other work has been dumped in our laps.

Rarely do we have the time to really be a nurse to our patients. We are expected to be everything....friend, family member, secretary, maid, social worker, counselor, assistant, concierge, detox professional, pharmacists, sleep apnea reps....it goes on & on. How did all of that somehow get lumped into what a nurse is?

Or maybe it's just the dynamics of my unit now that we have no techs and we are basically the only ones the patient interacts with other than the doctors popping in for 30 to 60 seconds & disappearing again. I don't know. Maybe it was just a crazy week & it's got me thinking too much.

Hopefully next week will be a better week.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Close Call

Word of advice to my fellow nurses...please, please, please think before giving hypertensive medications. For some reason, the dayshift nurse felt it appropriate to give Atenolol and Lisinopril to a patient with a BP of approx 92/45. NOT A GOOD IDEA! I had him by the time the meds kicked in with a BP of 62/38. Being an experienced nurse, I knew that a bolus was necessary & got the intervention started quickly.....I don't even want to imagine what the alternative might have been.

Work is going pretty well. I just celebrated my 1 yr anniv at this hospital I switched over to. It went by quickly. I also get a raise this month...sweet.

It has been outrageously hot & humid this month. We're talking like 99 degrees, but with the heat index...more like 105. Ugh. Too hot for me.