Filine

Performing CPR on my collegue, who collapsed at work! You can read more about it in a previous thread I posted

I have had a very rough patch not too long ago myself, so I know what it's like, but after everything I have chosen again with all my heart to be a nurse. You have to come first. It starts by taking care of yourself. Slow down now. Set your boundaries workwise (and stick to them!) and find the balance between your professional and personal life. Get your rest, eat well. Recharge and when you feel rested again you will be able to see things in a much better perspective and you'll be able to make the right choices for you. Do what makes you happy, life's too short!

Since I'm from the Netherlands my primary language is Dutch. I also speak English pretty fluently and I can make myself understandable in German and French! I'm currently doing my Master in Advanced Nursing Practice, so I am really happy that my english is as good as it is. Because I need it almost every day to understand literature, research, articles and studies :)

ewwww LOL

I love my job because... - I really can make a difference for another huming being, sometimes it's so small you barely even notice like a hand on a shoulder, the other day it's something as profound as saving a life - You can forever grow as a professional - It makes me realize how blessed I am in my own life - I feel privileged to be a part so many important moments in people's lives, the happy and the sad - There's not one day the same as the previous one, each day holds something new or different - I never look at the clock to see if I can finally go home - It helps you grow as a person and acquire knowledge and lifelessons that otherwise you wouldn't I probably could go on and on :)

Thanks everyone for all your stories :)

A hospital microbiologist and hospital hygienist told me and my team a while back it's much better for the skin of the hands to use an antiseptic only unless the hands are visibly dirty. Then you use soap and when your hands are dry you also apply the antiseptic. Soap has a nasty effect on the skin when you wash your hands as often as nurses do.

I know, I KNOW. I, and so are my other two colleague's, am still in awe about how everything fit together like it was meant to be, some kind of devine intervention... What I didn't know was that earlier my colleague had almost wanted to send her home because she wasn't feeling well, but didn't for no obvious reason. If we had send her home she would have been alone. It had a huge impact on me personally and professionally. I was terrified the first few days to go to the hospital to see her just because of the awful images I still had in my head and because I kept playing the movie over and over in my head asking myself if I should have done better (she ended up with three cracked ribs for instance). My managers and my team have supported me tremendously and took me to the hospital to see her, that helped me a lot to take away those nasty pictures in my head. Also the paramedics who were there came back several times to tell us she was still around because of how we handled things, they kept telling us how rare it is for someone to survive all of this outside a hospital...they were great! I love those guys :)

Did anyone ever experience a colleague collapsing or getting very ill on your unit and that your colleague became the patient? It happened to me last year, I had graduated 8 months before... I work in a long-term-care facility and our unit mainly focuses on palliative care and patients in a persistent vegetative state but we also have some rehab patients. There are doctors on call but for (rare) critical situations we need to call an ambulance because we don't have the equipment that's available in a hospital. That means that in a serious situation it depends on us until the ambulance arrives. It happened at the beginning of my shift around 8 a.m. after taking care of my first patient I send him ahead to the unit livingroom for breakfast while I cleaned up because he had an early appointment in the hospital. Suddenly I hear him call out to me and just by the way he called out I knew it was really serious. I had a young girl shadowing me that was going to do flex work on our unit over the summer. I rushed into the livingroom where he pointed at my collegue who was laying on the floor. I pushed the emergency button and I fell down on my knees to assess her. At first I thought she was having a seizure because she was all cramped up and gasping but within seconds she became extremely pale then blue and then a deep shade of purple. I tried to find a pulse which was absent and then she stopped breathing all together and I knew she was in cardiogenic shock. I send my flexworker to find my other colleagues and I started CPR and in the next moment I was on my own. I can't possibly tell you what I was thinking at the moment I only remember my own heart racing and realizing that she was going to slip away from under me. I was convinced she was dying right then and there. In the next minute my fellow nurses rushed in and while one of them immediately started to help me with the CPR the other one started calling the ambulance, a doctor and several other people. It seemed to last an eternity before two other nurses who were called in to assist us took over. I had no clue how long it took but I was exhausted and I stood back and watched. The next moment two ambulances were there (protocol in my country for cardiac arrest) and the paramedics put her on an IV and on a monitor, she was in VF and they started to shock her with the defib paddles six or seven times. The paramedics tried to intubate here but weren't able to because of the spasms in her airway and they continued bagging her. After another 20/30 minutes they finally had a rhytm and they took her to the hospital. In the next hour I was trying to grasp what had happened, praying for her to live because she was only 49 years old. Until we finally heard that she made it and that she was groggy but talking and recognizing my colleague that went with her to the hospital and that the first prognosis was very good. She's back at work now :) I have always known that it was very probable that I would have to perform CPR on a patient sooner or later. But to have the life of someone you know very well in your hands is definately another story. It's been with me for quite some time, especially the image of her seizing and turning blue. Did any of you have an experience like this?