We've all been there. Imagine your unit suddenly turning into a battlefield. Many bad things are happening at once. There is a crashing patient coming out of the OR or ED. An acute bed crunch is taking place and nurses are being pressured to transfer patients elsewhere in order to make room for sicker ones. Patients are climbing out of bed everywhere. The tele alarms won't stop going off. Phones are ringing off the hook and the secretary, as usual, is nowhere to be seen. It's 5pm and all the managers have left for the day. Now someone falls, then maybe a rapid response or code occurs. The entire pace of the unit has shifted dramatically. The small talk has stopped and people are shouting commands across the unit. Everything is amped up for the next two hours, and the environment is no longer therapeutic for you or for the patients.
For some of us, depending on where we work, this sort of shift in the pace of the unit happens seldom. For others, it happens every other day. It all depends on what type of unit we work in and the shift. However, regardless of those factors, most of us have experienced it on at least a few occasions and by the end of the day, we feel pretty run down.
The purpose of this thread is to discuss how you deal with these situations. What do you do when people are shouting at you and pressuring you to move patients. Do you tune those people out and keep doing what you're doing in order to maintain focus? Do you inadvertently start rushing tasks that require deft hands, patience, and focus? Does it cause you to make mistakes?
One of the things I will do when the unit picks up and people start going crazy, people are shouting, and tele alarms and bed alarms are going off non stop is to take my break, if I didn't do it already. I'll find the least busy person I can and tell them I have to go do something and will be off the floor for fifteen minutes, and can they please watch my patients. Then I use that time to sit down and gather myself and prepare for the rest of the day. I find that that kind of "pause" helps me function enormously better for the rest of the shift and makes me far more productive and able to contribute to my coworkers better. In really acute situations, like a code, I'll go to the bathroom and wait there for a bit so that the initial dust can settle. In those situations, people are shoving each other around the bedside, carts and furniture are being flung, linens are flying, and people are charging down the hall to do compressions and that kind of situation is just not therapeutic for me. So during those times I tend to go to the bathroom until the situation has calmed down a bit. Then after things are under better control I'll help with compressions, transferring, and so forth.
Use this thread to discuss the challenges you personally have faced in these scenarios and your strategies for making the situation more therapeutic for you.
Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
Yeah, sounds like this guy needs to be a yoga instructor or something, so he can feel "therapeutic ". Wonder what he does if it's his patient crumping?������������
I'm thinking a nice job selling shoes someplace. As long as the customers don't all come in at once.
On my own time. I'm on the clock? It's all about the patients.
Really, nurse-centered care? Don't make me laugh. (Seriously. It scares the rest of the inmates.)
And if there are that many people in a room during a code, maybe somebody can encourage the gawkers out? Strange, strange logic, that...but hey, it's easier to go on break or just mysteriously vanish.
Hospital units are an ever changing dynamic. They are not meant to be "therapeutic" for the nurse.I never walked out of work, feeling better than when I walked in.. When I am on duty, I expect to give all that I have, mind, body and soul.
We are paid to manage the inevitable chaos, not hide from it.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I wish I can just walk off the unit or hide in the bathroom when **** (literal and figurative) hits the fan, but alas, I am usually the charge nurse (in a non nurse centred therapeutic medical unit) and doing those things might just be seen as not fulfilling my responsibility as the charge nurse.
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But if I hit the ignore feature I won't be able to see all the comments which are the best part