I posted this to ask you what is your best service or save you have done for a clients welfare. It can be a case that always stand out in your mind as a positive thing you did for a client. I know I have several but there is this one that I recall like it was just yesterday. It was over a year and a half ago. I was doing a travel nursing assignment in a very rural community hospital in Nebraska. We had I think 1 surgeon (general), 1 ortho and 3 family Docs on staff at the hospital. That was it! A CRNA did all the surgeries and it was her who actually helped me find a resolution to a desprate situation I found myself in.
In mid shift of a 12 hour shift I got assigned a new admit. She actually was passed to me at 3PM during one of the shift changes. She had severe abdominal pain difuse in nature. Her abdomin was firm and she wanted something for pain. She had an order for regular tylenol and nothing else. So like the good nure I am I contacted her family Doc (a female) who had admitted her (at home). It had actually been her Doc's day off and she was being covered by some other Doc who I then called at the office. I talked with the office nurse and was told to contact the surgeon who had been consulted for this client. The surgeon was to have examined her in the AM but did not. He was now in surgery, just down the hall. I called back there to get someone to look at this client and hopefully get some orders. I was doing my very best to get someone down there STAT!
My charge nurse was covering the ER and I was on my own! I finally got the CRNA to look at this girl, she started to do the normal pre-op questioning and exam, like nothing was out of the ordinary. When she palpated her abd. she (I could read her face) began to be very concerned got on the phone to the OR and told that Doc he had an emergent client! We preped her for surgery, like removing her tongue piercing, belly button piercing and finger nail polish, while the CRNA did the informed consent! We stripped her in nothing flat and put her into a hospital gown.
The next day the surgeon stopped me in the hallway to tell me I had saved this girls life. He had not planned to see her till about 45 minutes d/t the fact he was doing a surgery that had been planned and it would have taken him that long to get to her in the hospital room. He told me she had an eptopic pregnancy that was the size of a grapefriut and ready to rupture. This will be the one I recall when I am old and gray!
"I remember when I had a good day at work"! When I can say I actually saved a life! I did nothing that anyone else would have done but GOD it is a good feeling to have such a catch in my belt! I will take this one to my grave, gosh though for the life of me I can not recall her name, LOL!
I have other experiences when I can say I did the extra mile for a patient. But none that so readily impacted a person's life as this. I have never worked ER or any units where this type of thing occurs freaquantly, so for me a lonely LPN this is as good as it gets!
"During Childbirth pain is recognized as physiological and not pathological and therefore pain may not be a bad thing." - unknown
"I am grateful to be connected to my inner sense of the 'rightness' of natural homebirth, but I find it totally bizarre that I have to become a modern-day Joan of Arc to accomplish that goal."
