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Discussion

I'm sooooo tired!

Can I vent? Just finished a 12 hour shift that took 15 hours to complete. Arrived this am with doa in bed 2...45 yo diagnosed monday with flu. respiratory arrest at home, cardiac arrest by the time she arrived in er. husb and and three young teenage children absolutely devasted. then a stream of patients all day. all docs in the area closed their offices today so we were also the "walk-in clinic". inpatient census triple our normal so the floor nurses (my back-up) were all way stressed out. d.o.n. came to help late in the afternoon...told me how grateful the floor nurses were that i was willing to eat lunch at the desk (writing with my right hand while i fed myself a tuna sandwich the doc's wife brought me with the left) so they didn't have to relieve me. Patients in the waiting room all day waiting for me to triage them.

My situation: very small hospital (30 beds), small er (5 beds). One nurse, one doc. Usually triage folks within 5 minutes of arrival time....forget that today, charlie! Registration clerks are good to come and tell me the patient's CC so I can say...just register and put in waiting room...or bring them back, register them after I triage. What do you do when you are overwhelmed?

Featured Replies

good question. Sometimes you want to just go outside and scream. Step away, just for a few minutes to regroup.

I understand how it feels when everything comes at you from all different directions, try to focus and triage. Thats the key.

Good luck to you in the future, it sounds like you did an outstanding job today!

on days like that ..... just keep truckin' and hope time flys by....

  • Experts

I too just finished the shift from you know where in our ER -(New Year's Eve nights)! Yuck...what about help from your unit manager? Other nurses? It sounds like you did a great job!

  • Author

Thanks for the "atta girl" from you guys. I went back in tonight to work the first 4 hours on the 7P shift on med/surg because they are so short handed. Lots of day shift nurses pulled me aside to tell me how much they appreciated me handling the past two day shifts without calling on them to help. With the flu outbreak all areas are stretched beyound their capacity. One of the frustrations for me was the long lab work turn-around...three hours for a chemistry, 1 1/2 hours for a cbc, 30 minutes for a dip-stick ua. X-ray was slow even though ER is supposed to get priority. Tonight I got report from the Infection Control nurse who was pulling a shift on med/surg. She will pull another one tomorrow. The DON is coming in every day to give meds. Another RN office person is pulling shifts on med/surg. PRN staff has been called on so much they aren't answering their phones or returning calls.

One of you asked about my unit manager...groan! She is a working manager, someone told me yesterday she calls for help if she has more than 2 patients. Most of yesterday I had all 5 beds full and was running out to the waiting room to triage patients there and only once asked someone to come triage one patient I was worried about but couldn't get to. The ER doc last night asked me not to break down the charts because he wanted to go back over his charting because it had been such a busy day, so I left them. Tonight when I came in to work med/surg, my manager called to tell me to come back and break those charts down. I refused! But, when I finished my little shift, I did go back. Fortunately ER is quiet tonight and the night nurse told me to go home and she would take care of them. The clerk could have done this, or the nurse manager earlier in the day when the ER was quiet for a few hours. The rest of us do that when someone has had a busy shift and it is quiet at change of shift.

Geez...I'm whinning again! Thanks for listening.

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