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.
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.
That reminds me of when I was pregnant and working noc shifts. I would get home and just sit in the kitchen and cry because I didn't know if I should eat or sleep first. I remember one day in my sleep deprived, horomonal, pregnant state deciding I was going to ask my doctor if I could get a feeding tube so I could eat and sleep at the same time
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....
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.
You do make it home--in one piece--but it takes over two hours because you have to stop every few blocks and catch a twenty minute nap in the nearest parking lot.
I've done the fall asleep in the driveway thing, too. And once on the stairs; I sat down on the bottom stair to get enough energy to climb up to bed and ended up falling sound asleep. DH came home at lunch, thought I'd either passed out or fallen down the stairs and in the ensuing fracas, all I could wonder was why he'd woken me up and spoiled a perfectly good sleep--didn't he know I needed to go back to work that night?
After working nights once, my cousin decided to do an errand on the way home. The store wasn't open yet when she got there, so she decided to take a brief snooze in the car. She woke up at noon, looked around, realized where she was, laid down and went back to sleep.
After doing six noc's in a row and you finally get a day off. You head into town to hang out with chums, reach the bar take off your coat and you're in your uniform....
Its always important to have days off. Working too many shifts can put your practice at risk and also the risk to your patients. As tempting as it is to work that extra 12 hours for a bit more cash - is simply not worth it at times.
I once worked 17 nocs in a row. They tried to write me up for it, but I told them that THEY called ME saying they were desparate (they were), and I was soooo tired, I just crawled out of bed, showered and showed up. I did NOT remember working 3/4 of the days that I did.....scary. I work days now, but still would never do something stupid like that again.....
Most I've ever worked in a row (12 hr shifts) was 6. Never, ever again. I was so tired, if a pt had coded I'd have probably handed them the ambu bag and said, "well you wanted to do this, worked hard for, so you can just ventilate yourself...."
i actually do sleep at redlights, while working 24 hour shifts as a paramedic. we have a station but rarely get to spend anytime there. sometime we get so tired that we stop for greenlights. last shift i drove two hours to get to my daughters house wher my wife is visiting, thank g there are those lil coffee shots i put three in my large coffee, luckily the sun came up. often after shift i get home without remembering the drive. when RN school starts in august it will really be interesting.
Its always important to have days off. Working too many shifts can put your practice at risk and also the risk to your patients. As tempting as it is to work that extra 12 hours for a bit more cash - is simply not worth it at times.
kmarie724
280 Posts
That reminds me of when I was pregnant and working noc shifts. I would get home and just sit in the kitchen and cry because I didn't know if I should eat or sleep first. I remember one day in my sleep deprived, horomonal, pregnant state deciding I was going to ask my doctor if I could get a feeding tube so I could eat and sleep at the same time