Night duty nurse

[talaxandra]

A friend just sent me this and I thought I'd share.

Did you hear about the nurse who was working night shift in ED? She woke up after a few hours of fitful sleep and remembered the morph that was thrown in some random and non-secure nook in the midst of some emergency. She proceeded to ring the ED, and began on a apologetic tirade about this poor practice. She mentioned the offending cupboard, and begged the nurse answering the phone (a new nurse, one who's voice she couldn't place) to locate the syringe, and dump it uneventfully into the sharps.

The listening nurse was very nice and very sympathetic, but couldn't immediately place the whereabouts of this hidden cupboard. The sleep-deprived nurse began a description of the layout of the ED, using terms like 'the fishbowl', 'the obs area' and 'the folder holder'. The seemingly ignorant nuse was nonplussed. These were not terms she was familiar with.

Lack of sleep makes even the most patient of professionals short-tempered. The conversation that ensued became a little rude and dramatic, and resulted in a request to put a more permanent nurse on the line, When informed that the seemingly ignorant nurse had been an ANUM for the last five years, the night-duty nurse went strangely quiet.

It was at that moment when she realised that she'd rung Bendigo Emergency, instead of Dandenong