I'm relatively new to nursing (at least hospital nursing). After moving to a hospital setting in March, I am slowly beginning to be successful at IV starts. At this point this is the only thing that makes me nervous and anxious and my heart drop when I hear that a direct admission is coming in. Some days, which I am sure is common with most people, I can start 4 IV's in a row, no problem. Other days, I can't win with anyone. We do not have an IV team in my place of employment. I work PM's, so I am pretty much on my own. I can never ask my co-workers to start IV's (it's rare) because they usually say no because they are too busy. I always try my best when I start an IV, but I am not going to stick someone more than three times because I think that is mean. If we can't start an IV, we are supposed to call the house supervisor, who will see which unit is able to spare a nurse to do an IV start.
Today, there were three nurses on PMs, and right at 4pm we received 3 direct admissions and one transfer from the ICU, so one of us had to take on two new patients. For the life of me, I could not start the IV, so I called the supervisor, who was in the ICU and said that she would send someone up. Usually the ICU is very busy and the nurse doesn't show up right away, which is very understandable and not an issue. A nurse did show up right away, and I thanked her for coming, and showed her the patient room. I left to continue with my admission orders. The ICU nurse returned about 5 minutes later, pretty much yelled at me because the guy apparently had really big veins and she had a neuro patient in the ICU that she needed to get to. She wanted to know if I had asked anyone else on the unit before I called ICU because she didn't have time to do IV starts like this. The other nurses on my unit were behind me and stated that yes, I did ask them but we had gotten slammed with admissions.
My issue with this is that 1)yes, I am brand new to IV starts and it's already embarrassing for me to call for help; 2)I would have totally understood if the ICU nurse had called and said that she couldn't come up because she was busy with her patient;
3) I thought nurses were supposed to work together?
I was just surprised and embarrassed I guess. The IV start wasn't an emergency, which I let the supervisor know. I know that other units, especially ICU is usually very busy, but the nurse could have called me and told me this (they usually do). I am relatively new to nursing, like I said, and I am just starting to feel helpless.
