Pt's that make you glad to be a nurse....

[NewEDRN]

As a relatively new ED nurse, and working in a small hospital that happens to have the only psych screening and inpatient facility in the county, we see a lot of frequent fliers, psych pts, od's, and like all ED's, tons of people with trivial problems who just can't understand why they are not seen within 5 mins.

We've had a brutal week, sometimes with waits of 7 to 8 hrs to be seen, and in the middle of the night last sat, we get a coding pt, K of 1.9, going back and forth between wide complex brady and pulseless vt, we did every med imaginable, shocked him 36 times, did central line, temp pacer, the whole nine in the er. with only 5 nurses on, one in triage, one in charge, and 2 helping in the code, only the charge nurse and one other nurse were trying to manage the other 50 pts currently in the ED.

I was in the code, but frequently switched with another nurse outside to help with pt flow, and a pt of mine, who was in plain view of everyone coming in and out of the critical care room, is literally waiting at the door everytime i came out, demanding i pull the dr from the code to read her CT report. She had been there only 1 and 1/2 hrs, and came in with n/v x2 earlier at home, totally uncaring for anything else going on in the ED, i could'nt believe that people could be so uncaring.

I go out to discharge one of my pts, who i got report on at 11pm, had been there 10 hrs, and who i had never even looked in on in almost 4 hrs, we were in the code for over 3 hrs. Her room was across from the code room, and as the doors opened and closed, she could see staff rushing in and out. She tells me she can wait if i need to go, that she knows there is someone there who needs my help a lot more than she does, and she has been in her room for the last 2 hrs, praying for the pt we were coding. I was truly touched, though i know most people do not have this type of patience and compassion, i sure wish more of my pts had some of these characteristics.

[Markthemalenurse]

I am glad to hear that through all of the craziness that you had that night, there was at least one good moment.

[NativeSundance, LPN]

Sometimes it's hard to figure people out. This is for sure a "me first" society we live in and it is so refreshing to hear that one of your patients who had been there for such a long time was humanitarian enough to actually CARE what might be happenening to someone other than herself! I run across these people once in a while and they make my night! Sure wish it happened more though...