Intuition??

Or the intercession of our guardian angels (our's, the patient's, who cares).

Personally, I sorta think my guardian angel looks like a newborn gerbil at this point, I've scared all the feathers off the poor thing....

But I do believe in intuition, whether it's an angel whispering in our ear or our brains doing 2+2 and getting to 4 with "2s" we don't consciously pick up...

It's happened to me a few times, too. It's always pretty startling when it happens.

Great catch, Tweety! :)

That gut reaction never steers me wrong. As a new grad was working smalltown ER. Gent on gurney on Tridil drip in first cubicle; lady comes in with back pain. Mid back for several days. Says not to worry, she'll wait. Gut revved up; put her on tele. Short version. Sent to cardiac hospital, blew out left ventricle. Died days later. After that I ALWAYS pay close attention to my gut.

There are some good books by scholars who try to explain things link this, intuition, mind-mind/matter conections, clairvoyance, etc. Basically they examine the possibility that we as humans have a 6th sense of sorts that we may have evolved, but that we have yet to hone. Yet sometimes, we can pick up on them.

http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553803352

http://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Minds-Extrasensory-Experiences-Quantum/dp/1416516778/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_k2a_1_img?pf_rd_p=304485601&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-2&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0553803352&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0GVYS5XW687PBHK6QDWF

I absolutely believe in intuition....the times I've looked at a pt (when I was in the room asking the pt's nurse did they want this admission or catch the next one) and thought...."hmmmmm, let's check that sugar...." only to find it was lower than my age.....

How bad of a situation that is depends on your age though :) On our floor, our youngest nurse is 22 and oldest is late 50's. Quite a difference in blood sugars between less than 22 and less than 59.

My husband thinks I'm wonky whenever I try and explain this "nurses' intuition" to him. Even though I have had it happen more than once. One of the most vivid in my memory was when I walked into a patient's room, took one look at them, and something just seemed not right. VS were good, color not too bad, patient denied any symptoms beyond "I just don't feel too good." Went ahead and drew a troponin on him and called the ICU charge nurse down to peek in...he took one look and said "I don't know why, but this guy is screaming MI at me." Sure enough, we had him in for an emergent cath within a matter of hours.

Then there was the one who I admitted for a hip fracture; normally I wouldn't have gotten her b/c she was admitted as medical, but they were out of medical beds so they put her on the tele floor until one opened up. I "accidentally" drew a set of enzymes on her...her first trop was in the teens, called the doc, got her on tele, next trop was >100. Ends up she had a syncopal episode but was afraid that she'd have to go to a SNF, so she lied about it and said she tripped over a rug instead, so the usual syncope work up wasn't ordered. She ended up with a CABG shortly thereafter.

Good job, Tweety. I could "feel" your smile. I agree too, Rapid Response Teams rock!

Blessings to you.

The other night I had a feeling that I should go check on one of my residents who had not being feeling well and was quite restless. Even though the CNAs had just been in room on rounds about half an hour ago. I went in and she way laying at the edge of the bed with her feet and legs hanging over the edge. Not quite as dramatic as some of these other stories, but I prevented he from falling out of bed by listening to my intuition.

I was working nights on telephone triage. Mostly we dealt with normal kids having normal problems: fever, vomiting, coughing, stepped on a nail, hit their head on the bunkbed.

This call was from some parents of an almost-1month old baby. she was sleeping a lot and didn't seem to be nursing right. Hmmm, no fever,no vomiting, peeing & pooping okay, interactive with parents. Just sleeping more. the mother put the phone down and talked it over with the dad. Clearly they were concerned. So I told them that I could hear the tension in their voices and although I didn't know what was going on, I could tell that something was different. Perhaps they might want to take the baby to the ER.

They did. As they pulled up to the ER door, the baby stopped breathing. the nurses started CPR immediately as the parents looked on, horrified. Within minutes the in-house pediatrican found an undiagnosed a large VSD and coartation of the aorta. An hour later the infant was life-flighted to a Children's hospital which whisked her into the ER immediately. She lived and even thrived after that.

I don't know what made me know that something was different. I got calls all the time from nervous parents who just needed a little education and I didn't send them all to the ER. But I'm so glad that I intervened and these parents didn't have to bury their baby.

One night I was working in the unit and I got called to go to step-down to assist with a patient that wasn't doing well. I got over there and the pt was in resp distress and we ended up intubating him and moving him to the unit. After we moved him to the unit, he started to stabilize, but I kept getting this feeling that there was something terribly wrong. I told the doc that I thought something was wrong and he kept assuring me that the pt was fine. The doc thought he was just fluid overloaded since he was a post op that had received multiple fluid boluses.

After about an hour, the pts pressure started dropping and I kept telling the doc that I had a really bad feeling about the pt. The pressure kept dropping and finally the doc decided to start a line and put him on a vasopressor. As I was running to grab the drip from the tube system, the pt started coding. The pt ended up coding twice that night and we put a balloon pump in at the bedside!! The pt ended up with a massive MI and had to have a CABG, but now he is home and doing fine!

Intuition...amazing word... TOTALLY i belive in intuition.... somenting from other senses told me always if is good or bad , always was like it, when somenthing told me, is bad or will go bad, always was happend like that. Was happen woth people new meet, actions, situations....job places....everythink.....Like nurse you need to belive in your extrasenses....in ER situations you don't have time to think to much, or asses to much, your intuition tell you... DO IT or stop to doing it, fallow your first instinct and call RRT or ER, you could save a patient life. If you stay and try to asses and reasses and ask your self what is about... could be too late! I never but never I was wrong in my intuitions... fallow your inner nursing sense...