I had a patient yesterday, a sweet LOL had gotten back from pacemaker, doing fine, but elevated BP systolic in 190s. She had come from a smaller facility with bradycardia and had gone straight to cath lab after briefly arriving to my unit, and had returned from that procedure in fine shape except for elevated BP.
My first course of action was to give her her lisinopril which she obviously had not had, then I did a follow up BP after giving that time to work and systolic was still in 180s. I gave all info to oncoming nurse regarding when I had given the BP med, etc and so forth, and paged the MD.
Oncoming nurse didn't want to take the call (she was in an empty room making a personal call to her boyfriend ) So, I took the call, even though it was past time for me to leave, wrote out the order, scanned it down to pharmacy, and accrued some more unwanted overtime.
Our hospital, like many, has been pleading with us to try to reduce overtime, and I'm all for it! I hate to stay even 5 minutes over.
So, what would you all have done in a case like this? I don't like to leave things undone, but I was annoyed at oncoming nurse for her being on her cellphone with boyfriend and wanting me to take this shift change call for a simple matter such as an elevated BP.
Yet, in some cases it definitely WOULD be appropriate to stay and follow through on issues from your shift. Where do you draw the line?