hotcakes

After a long night at work, cleaning up incontinent pt's, suctioning & doing trach care, caring for pt's in isolation rooms, or dealing with pt's coughing up all over you. I feel as if I have all those hospital germs all over me, so after the shift is over I have to shower as soon as I get home.

I work night shift, one night I had a pt who had an order for sitter protocol b/c she was confused and impulsive and tried getting out of bed. At about 23:00 I relieved my sitter for her 15 min. break, as I sat I the pt's room with the lights off, trying to chart in the corner of the room. I heard something fall from the pt's bedside, I got up to investigate, I found the pt's basin on the floor, so I picked it up and placed it back in its place and thought to myself that maybe the pt had somehow had knocked it down. When my sitter came back I mentioned what had happened and she said the same thing happened to her ealier and assured me that she had secured the basin so it wouldn't fall out again. We both thought it was strange and I left the room shutting the door behind me to try to keep the noise down in the pt's room. At about 03:00 I was about to go in to the pt's room when I was distracted by a coworker who had a question for me, as I stood a few feet away from the pt's room the door opened and I waited for the sitter to come out of the room, since she wasnt walking out I decided to approach the door. The sitter was also on her way to the door. She thought I had opened the door and i thought she had opened the door, we both said, "you need something?" we both answered at the same time "no" the sitter said she saw that the door had opened and assumed that it was me, and when I didn't walk in she decided to walk out.later I sent her on her lunch break and as I sat in the dark in the corner of the room the same basin fell out of the bedside table, this time I just left it on the floor. When the sitter cameback I told her what had happened and to leave the basin on the floor, she agreed. When I left the pt's room I closed the door once again with the sitter inside. Later on in the shift when it was time to give her 15 min break, the sitter came up to me and said she was talking to the pt and the pt had asked, who was the tall black person who stood over her bed. The sitter said she got goose bumps up and down her body and replied to the pt, "oh, it must have been a nurse." Little did the pt know that nobody else had gone in that pt's room but the sitter and I. In the next room another lady who waz A&Ox4 said, "will you tell those children laughing to let me sleep and pointed to the corner of the room which was empty. Another pt a few rooms down also mentioned that there were too many kids in this hospital at late hours of the night. I didn't know what to tell those pts so I just brushed it off. It was the creepiest night so far I have experience in this hospital, and hopefully it wont happen again.