la familia

There are days when I go to work (like today) and I just don't want to be there. Especially Mondays. They are guaranteed to be shitty most of the time. So when you go in dreading the day already and you have the moaning crackhead or neurotic Nellie the fibromyalgeur, it makes things so much worse. By the end of the shift, knowing you have to come back tomorrow, you drag your butt out to the car feeling worse than you did when you came in.

Then I get home. Here people treat you nice. They care about you. They do nice things for you after a bad day. I sit on the couch and watch a little TV with my son and I feel so much better. I can relax. Its not so bad after all.

Having the kind of job that I do, I appreciate my family. Without them, I don't think I could face the ER on a regular basis.

airing dirty laundry

Here's something I have never seen before: I was perusing the local Sunday paper and under a section entitled Whistleblower there was an article about nurses who have had their licenses suspended or revoked. Periodically I have seen this for doctors, but not for nurses.

Four of the nurses who apparently were the worst of the worst had little paragraphs telling about what they did mostly involving drug use. The others just had their names and towns listed.

Of course, like you would, I looked to see if I knew anybody. Didn't thank goodness. I don't know this seems kind of cruel to me. I suppose it is all public record. Is it necessary to drag it into the public? If one profession is going to have their dirty laundry aired, then what about dentists, vets, etc.? Shouldn't they all be in the paper.

Maybe this is as a result of a couple of highly publicized cases involving nurses and drugs. Who knows. Your thoughts?

nurse week: EPIC FAIL

Next week is nurses week. Whoopee. Every year the "medical staff" gives us a t shirt with so and so hospital nurses, blah, blah, blah(I bet all the docs think its really neat that they give us a shirt)..No thanks I'll pass. I don't want it. You showed us how much you value us when you gave us no raise last year, 1% this year and treated us like shit during negotiations. Madness don't forget..I'm like an elephant when it comes to that shit.

So you may take your so and so hospital nurses bullshit shirt and you know where you can put it. I have a great idea. A design for next years t shirt, in big bold letters: IT'S NURSES WEEK AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TSHIRT

somebodys watching you

You are being watched. On so many different fronts. You are being watched to see if you snoop in patients charts that have nothing to do with you. If you are, sooner or later you will be fired. Espescially if it is a case that is somebody well known or in the news.

You are being watched around narcotics. Audits are done. One time I didn't sign in the right place for something and was called at work a couple of days later about it.

You are being watched to see if you are charting specifically the way JCAHO wants you to chart, espescially around things like conscious sedation (which has become a charting nightmare), blood transfusions, restraint use, etc. etc. etc. One of the things that bothers me the most is knowing that I haven't done all the charting crap they want me to do.

Do you fill out the screening questions around violence? Have you done the medicine reconcilliation? Did you chart the start and stop times of that IV, antibiotic? Did you take vitals at least 1/2 hour prior to discharge, transfer, admission? Did you do and chart teaching about conscious sedation? Did you waste that narc within a half an hour of taking it out? Did you? Did you? Did you? You didn't? Perhaps we will need to WATCH you a little more closely.

this is an ER nurse

Top ten characteristics of an ER nurse:

1) toughness - be able take being called a racist bitch, a fat cow, be swung at, etc

2) Strong stomach: I have seen every color of everything that can come out of a person and everything that can be done to the human body and had to smell it too

3) Sales ability: you have to be able to sell ice to an eskimo in order to talk people into you doing painful or uncomfortable things to them

4) Acting ability 1: you have to be able to act like you care even if the patient is a complete jerk

5) Acting ability 2: you have to be able to keep a straight face no matter what someone tells you: yeah they did put that there...

6) Nerves of steel: you have to remain calm when a couple of hood rats run into triage with their friend who is shot in the head

7) morbid sense of humor - you have to find gross, cruel things funny

8) physical fitness - you have to have the ability to not eat for up to 12 hours, hold you bladder for up to 12 hours, help lift those upwards of 500 lbs, contort your body to do things in a room the size of a closet

9) good instincts - you have to be able to spot a drug seeker a mile away, know when someone is about to go down the toilet

10) be humble - ask for help when you need it, know you don't know everything

Anything to add?