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| No. 30 | 
Jun 12, 2009, 07:02 PM
 Re: How to tell you've worked too many shifts in a row
guess I worked too long and forgot my grammar
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Jun 13, 2009, 05:41 PM
Re: How to tell you've worked too many shifts in a row Originally Posted by nerdtonurse?  - You reprogram the telemetry monitors and now have Mario scrambling over the QRS complexes and hopping over the P waves for extra credit
- Your patient bradys down from a steady sinus tach to the 30's, and you run up the hallway yelling, "oh, hell no you are not making me fill out all that paperwork this late in the shift!"
- Your coworker trips and falls running to the same code, and all you can think is, "great, I'll end up with 2 of her pts when she goes to the ER."
- You are hauling your now dead pt to the morgue, your coworker's went to the ER, leaving 2 nurses on the floor with 28 patients, and you hear another code go off for your floor, and you jump out of the elevator and run...leaving the corpse in the elevator as a present for the next person who pushes the button....
- You have a conversation with the admin rep that sounds like this...."I lost my patient...no, I mean really lost them....no, they were dead, they can't find their way back to the unit...."
- When you hear a scream, you know someone found your deceased patient.
These are so funny I fell off my chair laughing. Patient's SO was NOT amused . . . .
A friend of mine on the transport team told me about the patient they dropped off in X-ray for a chest X-ray about 0800. The little old man was about 80, and somewhat lethargic but still able to chat with the transporter on the way down to X-ray. The tech promised to do the X-ray right away and call as soon as he was finished so that the transport team could pick him up and return him to the floor.
Transporter got busy and forgot about the little old man in X-ray. Besides, surely his X-ray had been finished long ago and he'd been returned to the floor. But Dispatch got a frantic call from the floor saying they'd tried to serve lunch to the man, but he wasn't in his room. No one recalls seeing him ALL morning. (RN was not a rocket scientist -- her primary concern was catching up with the latest gossip.) And what time did the transport team return him to his room?
Now we have a missing patient. Transporter went back to radiology and the tech had gone home suddenly. No one there remembered seeing the old man, and there was no film in the system for him. The wheelchair was missing, too. So the transport team began to quietly search . . .
About that time, a visitor complained that she'd gotten on the elevator when she arrived to visit her husband that morning, and there was a patient sitting on the elevator with a pillowcase over his head. She didn't think to mention it to anyone until she decided to leave for lunch -- and the same patient was on the same elevator, still with a pillowcase over his head.
The radiology tech had forgotten about the old man's chest X-ray for a couple of hours, and when she remembered, he was dead in the chair. She didn't want to admit to forgetting about him, and didn't know what to do for the guy (like CPR isn't an option?) or how to cover up her mistake . . . so she put a pillow case over his head and wheeled him onto the elevator, pressing the button for his floor. Of course he couldn't get off by himself, so he rode the elevator for hours, with Lord knows how many people encountering him before someone said something to a staff member!
| | No. 34 |
Jun 14, 2009, 03:28 AM
Re: How to tell you've worked too many shifts in a row
You wake up hearing a baby cry, and your first thought is "someone got lost on the way to the Peds unit again", then "wait, I'm in bed, I don't have a baby, why is a baby crying in my house?"...
then "I didn't have a baby and forget about having a baby did I?"
Then " Oh, my sister must have showed up without calling, and its her baby."
And then promptly fall back asleep without going out to say hi, until DH comes in to wake you up again.
This of course leaves the entire family thankful that you don't have a small child, because all believe said hypothetical child would die from neglect in its first months of life while I slept blissfilly beside it.
| | No. 35 |
Jun 14, 2009, 04:12 AM
Re: How to tell you've worked too many shifts in a row Originally Posted by wondern You surprise helpful smiling strangers in the elevator when you forget to blend in the yellow tinged concealer you applied to your dark under eye circles in the car at the red light on your way back in.
Oh yes, then you finally look in the mirror and wonder who that is!
I also know the "sleeping with glasses" yet mine tended to make a big dent in the side of my nose after I wound up turning on my side.
You know you have worked too many hours when you have a dream of being still at work and telling yourself you HAVE to stop at some point to go to the bathroom, finally waking and making a mad dash.
When your feet are so numb you have to take off your shoes to drive home or will do wheelies in the parking lot (the disadvantage of power steering and brakes).
When you can't decide if you need to eat or sleep first and wind up waking up with your head laying beside a half eaten plate of food.
| | No. 36 |
Jun 14, 2009, 11:07 AM
Re: How to tell you've worked too many shifts in a row Originally Posted by Angie O'Plasty, RN - When you finally get home and answer your cell phone with, "Good evening, This is Nurse Angie on Unit 5E" --and not only is it your private number, it's 11 am.
In the OR I worked at, we answered the phone, "Operating Room, 'Name'".
I was visiting my parents one time after a stretch of long shifts and three weeks on call. The phone rang and I went to answer it. I picked up the phone and sure enough, out of my mouth came, "Operating Room, Retired Too Soon".
My poor uncle was completely confused; he knew it was my voice, knew my name but had no clue how he had managed to call my place of work.  | | No. 38 |
Jun 15, 2009, 04:39 PM
Re: How to tell you've worked too many shifts in a row
When you stop at Hardee's to eat before you go home after your 4th nightshift (because you're too hypoglycemic to drive 30 miles) and something starts beeping in their kitchen, and you turn around and bellow, "turn off the *#@( pulse ox alarm!"
I think I scared the civies....but it sounded just like the "disconnected patient" pulse ox alarm....
| | No. 39 |
Jun 16, 2009, 06:48 AM
Re: How to tell you've worked too many shifts in a row
When you drive to Walmart and don't remember how you got there or why you were going there in the first place.
You get home and don't remember if you gave report.
You don't remember where home is! I circled around and around before I finally gave in, called my dad and asked where am I going. LOL It's sad that he said, chicookie, that is the third time this month.
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