Minor vent:DCAB

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Specializes in Emergency, Trauma, Critical Care.

So attempted to call report to a nurse yesterday on a sickish patient. She asked if the patient had been fed. Pt was NPO until bout 40 minutes prior. In that time is finished a conscious sedation on another patient, she had gone to XR again sand I got two new patients, one was short of breath and a very hard stick.

this nurse couldn't wrap her head around the fact I hadn't fed the patient. I gave up trying to justify it as she wasn't getting it. She apparently didn't hear us have multiple traumas overhead or the STEMI. Normally my tech would have helped with grabbing food, getting her a tray was on my plan. But frankly, NPO for 9 hours instead of the 8 1/2 per order isn't the end of the world unless the patient has a low blood sugar....my shortness of breath needs her mag and blood and EKG and CXR more....

Or am I getting it wrong and it's DCAB now? Circulation and airway be damned....I want a diet! Patients seem to think so anyway.

its just frustrating when it's a really rough shift.

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

Grrrrr

Answer - my other patients have needs that are more important than fulfilling non stat diet order on a patient with a normal blood sugar.

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Specializes in Infusion Nursing, Home Health Infusion.

When a nurse gets report from a nurse in another department that nurses has no way to know what you have been going through to meet all your patient's needs.They should trust that you can prioritize and just accept your explanation if you choose to explain. The other day a rehab nurse tried to pin me down to the exact minute that I would be there to restart an IV and just could not understand that if I got a call that was more urgent than his 50 ml an hour NS then I would have to do that one first.Not to mention that I can't always tell how long a call will take me to complete. I gave him a time range and he could not understand why I could not give him an exact time. In your situation I would have just said... No there was no time for a tray so please order her one when she gets there or I can order her a tray.

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