This happened in a hospital in the late 90's opposite a Big Ben/parliament buildings, one of the most prestigious in the UK.
I'm working my 2nd ever weekend in A&E caring for majors - that's like the middle area - they generally have 3 areas, minors, majors and resus.
Anyway, I have the left hand wall, and 4 patients, most of them look like they're going to be fine. It's a friday night, and just getting heaving, when suddenly I hear 'help me' drift across the room. But no one reacts. I begin to wonder if I imagined it, but then I hear it again, 'help me'.
I track it down, and it's a patient on the opposite side from mine, and I walk into the room to see someone who looked like he should be dead. It was a pale, african man, soaked in sweat, the whites of his eyes huge, starting out me in desperation. I automatically put my hand on his wrist, feeling for a pulse. I feel putting hands on your patient is a great way to assess things while talking to them.
I can't really feel a pulse, and he's cold and clammy to touch. Whatever is going on, it's not good.
'What are you doing?' I turned to the sound of the charge nurse, an unhappy look on her face. 'Shouldn't you be looking after you own patients?' she asked.
'Um, he called out for help, and no one else seemed to hear him'
'It's just Mr Smith, he does that all the time' she said, as if this explained everything.
'But, but..' I stammered, 'he looks really sick.'
'He's a regular, he always looks like this, so please leave.'
I reluctantly left, but 5 minutes later I heard it again, 'help me.'
I couldn't ignore him, and this time grabbed the ECG machine as I went in and quickly wired him up.
'I thought I told you to take care of your own patients' this time the charge nurse didn't hide the anger in her voice, but I ignored her as the ECG printed out.
I took one look at the ECG and ran to the nearest doctor. He took one look and asked me who this belonged to and we ran to Mr Smith's room, grabbed his bed and rushed him through to resus.
I stayed briefly, until the resus nurse took over, and I headed back to my own patients.
The doctor came round later to thank me, while the charge nurse never spoke to me again. The doctor said he couldn't believe Mr Smith was still alive. His potassium was 1.5 and the doc reckoned he did not think it possible for life at this low level.
I never found out the bigger clinical picture of why it was so low. But I'll never forget that charge nurse.
The crazy thing is, nothing happened to her. I was an agency nurse with no history and no one would believe my version of events. You see, the scary thing about agency/temp nursing is that often you fill in when a place is short or very busy, and sometimes the care you can manage is to simply fill in the gaps and not much more due to the huge workload. Another weakness (which may not be true in the USA) but in NZ and UK emergency rooms, the documentation is often pretty rushed and weak. The result is that if you go stirring things up with complaints, they will find a way to get back at you.