BodhiHeart

It seemed cruel to me. A compression machine was used. It looked off center. I can only assume most of his ribs were broken by it. I feel pretty hardened these days, but have not been in a ton of codes. Many of the other nurses were much more experienced than me. Plus, I am a traveler and not familiar with a lot of things on this unit. The MD also seemed determined to keep going which another nurse told me was characteristic of this doctor. No one seemed emotionally involved, but I felt disgusted by the situation. Everyone broke out in laughter a couple of times during the code and seemed to completely lack respect for the dying patient. It just seemed like pointless suffering inflicted on the patient without any consideration of the long term outcome.

When do you accept that it is futile to code or prolong a code? I had a patient maxed on 5 pressors. He was saturating in the 70s on 100% vent settings and gradually dropping lower. He ended up being coded twice. It was a combined time of over an hour of CPR. I felt like the patient was being tortured half way through the first code. He ended up dying anyway which I felt was the obvious outcome from the onset. Am I wrong to feel this way? No one else seemed bothered by it.

I had a patient on 100% heated high flow that became confused, then repeatedly had intermittent periods of desaturation. The blood gas showed hypoxemia. The patient was proned then several hours a repeat blood gas showed some improvement so the patient was not intubated. The night residents were honest about wanting to avoid intubation, but were in contact with an attending MD. The patient’s pulse oximetry reading continued to intermittently desaturate below 88% throughout the shift. I was drawing blood one time from the patient and another nurse came up to me afterwards and told me the patient was desaturating in the 70s. It could have been from a tourniquet, who knows. Every 15 -30 minutes another nurse would tell me he was desaturating and I felt like many nurses thought I was not watching my patient or informing the MD, but the MDs were aware of the situation. Any advice or insights for this type of situation? I left feeling defeated.

Hi There, I am looking for advice on how to leave a position as smoothly as possible. I transferred to an icu position 4 months ago. I had a shortened orientation period of three weeks compared to the three months for new grads because I have previous icu experience. Although I have worked night shift in the past, this time I am experiencing moderate depression working nights. I feel so crappy every night I work. I am being given the easiest patients so I rarely have enough to do. I spend most nights staring at my phone and find it tedious. I miss the business and purposefulness of day shift so much. There are team leader nurses who have a lot of control on the unit. I find many of them to be unnecessarily rude and unsupportive when there is a problem. I have had a couple of minor issues and felt totally thrown under the bus both times. I watched another nurse, who has always been so kind and hardworking when I work with her, cry half the shift because a team leader criticized her so harshly. I would not want to have a real issue arise on this unit, 100% sure I would be treated horribly. It is just not a good fit for me all around. Of course I feel bad about leaving. At least they didn't spend a lot of money orienting me compared to all of the new grads. They are orienting five more new grads now. At least I can offer to leave in three months when they get off orientation so they are not too short staffed. I am looking at travel positions now and won't resign until I secure one. I would appreciate any constructive feedback and advice you can offer. I am hoping to handle this process as professionally as possible. I just don't think any job is worth feeling this bad. Thanks in advance, Truly Blue