This is my public service announcement. This is directed primarily to non-medicals, floor nurses, ICU nurses, hospital administration and anyone who has an opinion on ED nursing who hasn't done it for at least 1 year. IT'S HARD!!! And, you know all these crazy stories you read? You know? The ones where the pts are attacking us, and ambulating to the nurse's station and popping their own eyeballs out, and the MDs are trying to kill our pts, and the families are bonkers, and the baby mama and the wife of the dead gsw started fighting in the conference room, and bed 24 has scabies head to toe and alzheimers, and the psych pt hung herself from the exam light, and meanwhile the other psych pt stopped masturbating long enough to attach the tech NAKED in the hall like a QB with a football, and nutritional services wants the dinner tray orders at 3 PM (as IF), and bed 3's neighbor is on the phone and wants to know all the medical info on the pt, and new nurse is about to have a panic attack and needs your help NOW, and Dr. Dependent needs you to hold his hand during the suturing of the lac, and evs won't clean the rooms so you have to clean them yourself, and every 500 lb female pt getting lasix refuses a foley, and everyone needs a come to jesus talk before they will let you start their iv, and the drug rep is here for an inservice, and floor killed somebody and is calling a code, and I can't resuscitate the 15 yoa gsw if you won't get off his body, and the tele nurse got attitude when the tech brought the pt up because he needed to pee as soon as he got there (okay??what??), and we are out of clean catches, and none of the rooms have bp cuffs, and the thermometers are all missing, and bed 19 is refusing xrays before pain meds, and security can't count to 1, and no one ran the quality controls on the accucheck machines, and the local no-nursing home is on the phone to give report again on a pt who has probably been dead since yesterday because after all it is friday and nh dump day, and ems is on the wall and tired of holding and bagging the vent dependent pt with a toe sore that won't heal (but that's ok he's bagging himself now to give them a break), and ems is waiting in your room for the pt in svt to be triaged (no it's only ST @ 170...do nhs ever treat fever or hydrate vent dependent pts?), and airmed is waiting on the roof with another burn because a mobile meth lab blew up because they called report to the house sup instead of the ED and she didn't have enough sense to call us and tell us, and a woman came in the front in labor (we don't have OB but she doesn't know that because she received no prenatal care), and bed 8 wants another blanket (geez we are sooo rude), and the dead gsw's wife and baby mama stopped fighting and are now trying to break into the morgue to see his body, and the fire alarm is still going off, and the triage nurse needs help with the high drama pt rolling around on the floor in the front because she is too busy to deal with it, and every stretcher is broken, and the severely demented pt in 11 won't stop screaming and we don't know why, and everything is lining up in a perfectly symbonic pattern just to make our jobs harder/impossible? THIS IS THE NORM!!!! These are every day events. It is more of a rare occassion to have a pt come in , only marginally sick, with great veins, get seen quickly, have an uneventful work up, not have some crazy demands, worse...family with crazy demands, have a full stomach, follow directions, and have manageable pain. Oh, and get a hospital bed quickly. Never, this never happens!! Maybe once a week. Do you people watch Grey's Anatomy or ER? Yeah, they toned it down!! This is what it is like! You think that's bad? Spend four hours in triage!! I dare you, just four! You have no clue. You just have no clue. That's it, no arguing. You can have all the righteous opinions you want, but at the end of the day YOU ARE CLUELESS! You think you know? You did some wimpy 8 hour shadow shift? You passed through on foot one day? You would cry! YOU WOULD CRY!!!! NO I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE STUPID CT SAID! NO I DIDN'T CHECK HIS SUGAR BEFORE LUNCH! NO I DIDN'T ROLL AND CHECK FOR BED SORES! IS THIS A JOKE? ARE YOU PEOPLE KIDDING ME? YOU'D CRY!! CRY!!!!
This is my public service announcement. This is directed primarily to non-medicals, floor nurses, ICU nurses, hospital administration and anyone who has an opinion on ED nursing who hasn't done it for at least 1 year. IT'S HARD!!! And, you know all these crazy stories you read? You know? The ones where the pts are attacking us, and ambulating to the nurse's station and popping their own eyeballs out, and the MDs are trying to kill our pts, and the families are bonkers, and the baby mama and the wife of the dead gsw started fighting in the conference room, and bed 24 has scabies head to toe and alzheimers, and the psych pt hung herself from the exam light, and meanwhile the other psych pt stopped masturbating long enough to attach the tech NAKED in the hall like a QB with a football, and nutritional services wants the dinner tray orders at 3 PM (as IF), and bed 3's neighbor is on the phone and wants to know all the medical info on the pt, and new nurse is about to have a panic attack and needs your help NOW, and Dr. Dependent needs you to hold his hand during the suturing of the lac, and evs won't clean the rooms so you have to clean them yourself, and every 500 lb female pt getting lasix refuses a foley, and everyone needs a come to jesus talk before they will let you start their iv, and the drug rep is here for an inservice, and floor killed somebody and is calling a code, and I can't resuscitate the 15 yoa gsw if you won't get off his body, and the tele nurse got attitude when the tech brought the pt up because he needed to pee as soon as he got there (okay??what??), and we are out of clean catches, and none of the rooms have bp cuffs, and the thermometers are all missing, and bed 19 is refusing xrays before pain meds, and security can't count to 1, and no one ran the quality controls on the accucheck machines, and the local no-nursing home is on the phone to give report again on a pt who has probably been dead since yesterday because after all it is friday and nh dump day, and ems is on the wall and tired of holding and bagging the vent dependent pt with a toe sore that won't heal (but that's ok he's bagging himself now to give them a break), and ems is waiting in your room for the pt in svt to be triaged (no it's only ST @ 170...do nhs ever treat fever or hydrate vent dependent pts?), and airmed is waiting on the roof with another burn because a mobile meth lab blew up because they called report to the house sup instead of the ED and she didn't have enough sense to call us and tell us, and a woman came in the front in labor (we don't have OB but she doesn't know that because she received no prenatal care), and bed 8 wants another blanket (geez we are sooo rude), and the dead gsw's wife and baby mama stopped fighting and are now trying to break into the morgue to see his body, and the fire alarm is still going off, and the triage nurse needs help with the high drama pt rolling around on the floor in the front because she is too busy to deal with it, and every stretcher is broken, and the severely demented pt in 11 won't stop screaming and we don't know why, and everything is lining up in a perfectly symbonic pattern just to make our jobs harder/impossible? THIS IS THE NORM!!!! These are every day events. It is more of a rare occassion to have a pt come in , only marginally sick, with great veins, get seen quickly, have an uneventful work up, not have some crazy demands, worse...family with crazy demands, have a full stomach, follow directions, and have manageable pain. Oh, and get a hospital bed quickly. Never, this never happens!! Maybe once a week. Do you people watch Grey's Anatomy or ER? Yeah, they toned it down!! This is what it is like! You think that's bad? Spend four hours in triage!! I dare you, just four! You have no clue. You just have no clue. That's it, no arguing. You can have all the righteous opinions you want, but at the end of the day YOU ARE CLUELESS! You think you know? You did some wimpy 8 hour shadow shift? You passed through on foot one day? You would cry! YOU WOULD CRY!!!! NO I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE STUPID CT SAID! NO I DIDN'T CHECK HIS SUGAR BEFORE LUNCH! NO I DIDN'T ROLL AND CHECK FOR BED SORES! IS THIS A JOKE? ARE YOU PEOPLE KIDDING ME? YOU'D CRY!! CRY!!!!
If you disagree, allow me to direct you to the red x.
Not all on the same shift surely. Who is it exactly who doesn't think ED nursing is hard?? I assume you save lives in there ... sometimes .... Last I heard that wasn't easy.
Some of these things happened on different days, but for the most of them were one day and normally things are like this daily. Plus several other minor irritants I didn't include. I get the impression there are many people who don't think ED nursing is hard (why else would they snort before asking me about a pt's bedsores during report and ask things like, how long has this pt been in the ER?) I have yet to formulate a good response to the pt's length of stay in the ED other than, "why?"
If your response is a reaction to "the floor killed a pt" I always say that, everyone I work with does. "I killed bed 8" or "John killed somebody else again," or "well, you almost killed her." It's not like murder kind of kill, just that the pt died and you were the caregiver, so I call it kill. It's just supposed to be funny. It's called humor. It's just a twisted way, instead of an overly sensitive way, of conveying the same message. It kind of takes the edge off a tense situation and opens up room for humor (even if it is inappropriate.) After all, ER nursing is nothing if not full of inappropriate humor at inappropriate times. (ie: something funny always happens in a code.)
I once was putting an NG in an elderly ALOC patient (although since she was base-line non-verbal and never moved or opened her eyes I'm not sure how the ECF could tell a difference) when the person helping me said "Uh I don't think she's breathing" sho 'nuff she was now a PNB. At any rate we did all the stuff but never got her back ( I think she was like 98). So for the rest of the shift my doc kept referring to the patient I had killed. I took an unopened NG tube and wrote "You're next!" on the outside of the package with a black sharpie and taped it to his computer. We still laugh about that.
I once was putting an NG in an elderly ALOC patient (although since she was base-line non-verbal and never moved or opened her eyes I'm not sure how the ECF could tell a difference) when the person helping me said "Uh I don't think she's breathing" sho 'nuff she was now a PNB. At any rate we did all the stuff but never got her back ( I think she was like 98). So for the rest of the shift my doc kept referring to the patient I had killed. I took an unopened NG tube and wrote "You're next!" on the outside of the package with a black sharpie and taped it to his computer. We still laugh about that.
That's soooo funny! I took a bottle of heparin one time and stuck it up on the bulletin board @ the nurses' station with a sign that said, "Poisoned Heparin from China!!!" in big letters. Everyone laughed but one nurse who was mad because later on in fell in her Crystal Lite. Guess the taste changes when you see the word poisoned floating in your drink.
You know how nurses give nick names to one another occassionally? Well when I was a new nurse, alot of my pts died. Not all on one day or anything, but my pts seemed to have bad luck. Not my fault, at all. Anyway, my friends started calling me the Grim Reaper and if they had a really old DNR who was taking agonal respirations, they would say, "grab your sickle and go in 10 and finish her off." Or, in report, "oh, he sounds really sick. Don't give him to her!" or '"you are not allowed to go in room 22!" Things like this. We are just crude, cruel, and tasteless nurses I guess. But I feel like, whatever works for us. I work with a group of great, smart, compassionate nurses!
I am almost positive most people in here are my coworkers or are all ER nurses this fantastic??
My worst shift was in Sept. when Hurricane Ivan (? i think that is what it was) hit us in southwestern ohio. Talk about hell. We have a 28 bed ER with a 5 bed fast track. We had no electricity, lost our computerized tracking board, no air conditioning (SOOO unseasonably hot, but windy, dripping with sweat. the er was 80 degrees!!!) No tube system, all labs taken to the lab by hand ( 10 min walk there and back) MD had to go to Xray with patients (again 10 min round trip) CT scanner was down (Too hot!!!) Stuff flying around in the parking lot and breaking peoples windshields(I can't go home now! AHHH!!) Both Night shift techs called off (Wives wouldn't let them leave????), 4 hour lab turnaround (I"M HOT, nurse can i have a fan??? No electricity!) had codes left and right, all of the breathers showed up around 10 pm like clockwork ( no electricity at home for CPAP, Bipap, no O2 or nebulizer machines working!!!!) people getting hit in head with flying objects (No CT!!) -- No aircare, 3 hour waits for transport squad to hosptial with electricity, no food (who needs to eat??) No freaking electricity, level 3 county emergency. NO lights to see the road with, let's go drinking and driving!!! ( How many MVA's can you have in one night??) By the time everything came back on, we had to completly put everyone through the system and take them back out. Our volume was ridiculous. All in all, 8 hour turn arounds for even the easiest work ups. Hands down, shittiest shift of my life!! (administration was called in and they stand there with their grins, "How can i help?" Then answer the call light-- Oh, your lady in bed 2 needs some water. Gee thanks for answering that for me! )
Ahh.. A sandwich would have been nice :) An award for my charge nurse would have been great. I'm suprised she wasn't hiding in our lockdown psych room :)
I am almost positive most people in here are my coworkers or are all ER nurses this fantastic??
My worst shift was in Sept. when Hurricane Ivan (? i think that is what it was) hit us in southwestern ohio. Talk about hell. We have a 28 bed ER with a 5 bed fast track. We had no electricity, lost our computerized tracking board, no air conditioning (SOOO unseasonably hot, but windy, dripping with sweat. the er was 80 degrees!!!) No tube system, all labs taken to the lab by hand ( 10 min walk there and back) MD had to go to Xray with patients (again 10 min round trip) CT scanner was down (Too hot!!!) Stuff flying around in the parking lot and breaking peoples windshields(I can't go home now! AHHH!!) Both Night shift techs called off (Wives wouldn't let them leave????), 4 hour lab turnaround (I"M HOT, nurse can i have a fan??? No electricity!) had codes left and right, all of the breathers showed up around 10 pm like clockwork ( no electricity at home for CPAP, Bipap, no O2 or nebulizer machines working!!!!) people getting hit in head with flying objects (No CT!!) -- No aircare, 3 hour waits for transport squad to hosptial with electricity, no food (who needs to eat??) No freaking electricity, level 3 county emergency. NO lights to see the road with, let's go drinking and driving!!! ( How many MVA's can you have in one night??) By the time everything came back on, we had to completly put everyone through the system and take them back out. Our volume was ridiculous. All in all, 8 hour turn arounds for even the easiest work ups. Hands down, shittiest shift of my life!! (administration was called in and they stand there with their grins, "How can i help?" Then answer the call light-- Oh, your lady in bed 2 needs some water. Gee thanks for answering that for me! )
Wow! Okay, I'm going to remember this story when I go to work this weekend. I'm going to keep saying, "Well, at least there's not a hurricane!"
sunray12
637 Posts
Not all on the same shift surely. Who is it exactly who doesn't think ED nursing is hard?? I assume you save lives in there ... sometimes .... Last I heard that wasn't easy.