I am a new grad of 6 months on a Surgical/Ortho/Trauma floor. When I first started here, I was miserable. I'm very shy and it's hard for me to talk to new people. But in the past 2 months things have gotten so much better - I feel more comfortable, I know most of the interns and attendings, and I'm actually happy. Being a new nurse, I sometimes question what I need to page the intern about, and what I don't. Sometimes I call over things that seem important to me, but apparently aren't to the team. Up until this point the interns have been really nice and humored me, explaining gently when I ask that it was probably something that could have waited. But on Thursday all of that was ruined and now I am angry and upset and I'm not sure what I should do. So I'm just going to rant in a long post here, and hopefully feel better after getting this all out.
This past week I was working 7a-7:30p. Near the end of my day on Wednesday, one of my patients was complaining of increasing pain. She had just been started on percocets that morning, and they really weren't helping her. Her daughter was there and for obvious reasons, quite concerned. I told her I'd call the intern on call to see if he could change her pain meds to something else. I started paging him at 6pm and still had received no call back by 7pm. By this time, the daughter was furious, stating this was unacceptable and she wanted something done NOW. So I looked for the person who made the last order, who happened to be the chief resident for that team, and I paged him. Several times. After another half hour, he called back and I explained my patient's pain issue. He said to give her IV Dilaudid and he'd have the intern change her pain meds to po dilaudid. I did so, the patient and daughter were happy, and I went home.
Thursday morning I came in and was told by the night nurse that the same patient was doing wonderfully on the po dilaudid. She also told me that another daughter had called that night complaining that nobody gave her mother pain meds on Wednesday (which the night nurse assured her that I did). I went in to see my patient at 8:00 am- and she told me her pain was excrutiating and would not be able to do anything if the pain stayed that way. She wasn't due for more dilaudid for another hour and rather than have the same thing happen again (and have the daughter yell again) I decided to page the on call intern right away. It was the same intern on as Wednesday, and once again he did not call me back. After another hour of paging and no response, I spoke to my resource nurse to ask her advice. I wasn't sure if I should page the chief resident again, or if there was someone else on the team I should page instead. We looked at my patient's orders, and once again the chief had written the last order, so she suggested I call him. So I paged him several times with no call back. After 20 minutes, I happened to see the chief resident walking onto the floor, so I hurried over to him. Our conversation went something like this, all the while me trying to keep up with him as he continued walking away:
Me:"Oh I just paged you. I'm sorry, but Mrs. so and so is having more pain issues just like she did yesterday-
MD: "This is the first I've heard of this."
Me: "well I've been paging the intern for an hour-"
MD: "He's in the OR."
Me: "Well, he never called me back to tell me that. Anyway, Mrs. so and so-"
MD: "There's a third year resident you should have called."
Me: "Well, I didn't know that."
MD: "Next time call the third year." and he stormed off muttering.
At this point I just stood there with my mouth open. Luckily, my nurse manager was walking right around the corner and she grabbed me and pulled me into her office right away as I began to cry hysterically. Apparently, the MD had been swearing at me as he walked away. Whether it was "f you", or "f off" I don't know, but my nurse manager heard him and he didn't abbreviate. She told me she immediately turned to this resident and told him that they needed to talk. He told her he was busy and kept walking. I explained to her the whole issue and what had happened. She assured me that I did nothing wrong and that there was no excuse for his behavior. I'm supposed to be the patient advocate, yadda yadda yadda. While I felt better when she spoke with me, the rest of the day I obviously felt like crap. I kept questioning everything I did. It's hard to stand up for yourself when you're new and you're not convinced that what you did was right. And being shy doesn't help. Anyways, my manager said she'd definitely speak to this resident and his attending. I've been off since that day, and I'm so nervous to go back in on Wednesday. I'm so scared that I'm going to have another patient on that team. And what if my nurse manager doesn't do anything - should I do something? Part of me wants to stand up for myself. He really made me feel like I was worth nothing, a lowly nurse. But part of me just wants to pretend it didn't happen and not cause any tension. I'm just so angry, I wish I could have yelled right back at this guy.
Any advice??
~Jaime