Dear Lord: Please give me patience....

[elizabeth8503RN, MSN, EMT-B, NP]

i am working a women's health floor (which ends up being a catch all for everything including surgeries), and i have 4 patients. my group is not a bad group, but i am running out of patience.

lady in 1: fever, double mastectomy, 50's, a/o x3, pleasant, has a brood of sons that are there for support

guy in 2: severe dehydration and hyponatremia/ infected surgery site with a wound vac, alert, pleasant, forgetful

lady in 3: vag hysterectomy, sweet, alert, forgetful, family in and out.

guy in 4: para, depressed, debridement of sacral ulcer, wound vac, just slightly dismissive of people and care.

lady in 1: call light is going off constantly, states that she is not aware that she is pushing it. sons have some questions, those are for the most part easily answered, wants some pain meds.

guy in 2 doesn't want to eat, no appetite, convince him to have some soup, forgets why he is here, but does not want to go home yet.

lady in 3 family has some questions, answered, then lady 3 has to get up, and go to the bathroom. in the process her iv gets jostled, and one of the connectors gets loose, starts dripping blood. i get that cleaned up, assess and see that the iv is still intact and running fluids fine. not two minutes after i leave the room, she believes that the iv is "pooling" in her arm. (dear lord, give me patience.) reassess, no indications at all that the iv has infiltrated. continue to reassure her that the iv is in fact, fine. leave the room, and she calls back 5 minutes later stating she is done with the bathroom.

iv remains fine. get her up and back to bed, (the entire time she is saying she is sorry for making a mess and bleeding all over the place) (dear lord, give me patience.) i tell her, its fine, we can clean up the mess, and that it is completely normal for her to bleed some after surgery. she goes back to complaining about the blood around the iv site. she sits down on the bed, and notices that she bled some on the bed, and will not stop saying "sorry."

(dear lord, give me patience.) she is hooked up to an iv, pca, has a foley, and on oxygen. tubes and cords are twisted and tangled, and i ask her to sit for a second while i get all of these tubes untangled. she wants to know when i put on her scds. i tell her one thing at a time.

she tries to lay down several times before i am ready, and keeps asking the same questions over and over and over and over again. finally we get her in bed, linens changed, and got her settled.

thirty minutes later she is complaining that the scds aren't working. i go in and look at them, they are inflating and deflating exactly the way they are supposed to. i let her know that they are hooked up fine, and that they are working fine. she is okay with this and tells me she is going to try and get some sleep.

guy in 4: just gruff, and doesn't really want too much of anything. lady in 1: have to "chaperone" one of the docs, because he is going to take a look at her mastectomy sites. get a few new orders, and go about my business.

lady in 1's call light keeps going off, and she insists she is not pushing it. (dear lord, give me patience.) come to find out nearly all the way through the shift, every time she pushes the light button, the call button goes off. time to call maintenance, and what do ya know....no more accidental pushing of the call button.

dear lord: thank you sooooo very much for giving me patience tonight. i reallllly needed it.

[anticoagulationurse]

I have learned to not ask Him for patience or He will give me a means and a reason to learn it.

[juliannc99]

"Ask and you shall receive".... I asked for my life once and he blessed me by letting me keep it. I figure I've used up my requests so now all I do is thank him A LOT for His patience with me.

[cherryames1949]

My grandmother used to say this little rhyme to us.

Patience is a virtue

Possess it if you can

Its seldom in a women

and never in a man.

I am still working on cultivating the virtue of patience. I hope that God will answer your prayers. We could all use help acquiring this virtue.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

a virtue is nay a virtue untried.....

[oramar]

Yes 4 patients like this will keep you busy. As busy as you were with a little experience you can handle it. My beef was that I frequently found myself with 8 just like that, when it started to hit 11 and12 I headed for the door. PS I think saying a prayer is very nice. A friend taught me to pray on the way into work for focus and few other things. Always for the patients sake never my own. I always thought that was a big help.