What to do in family emergency situations?

[treeye]

Two weeks ago at the beginning of my shift when I was passing meds, my husband called crying because his Dad coded twice in a hospital and was transfered to ICU. He wanted me to come up immidietely because he is afraid his Dad won't make it.

I was emotionally too. I talked to my boss. She said they will try find someone as soon as they can so I can leave. In the mean time, she told me to finish my med pass. With my coworker's help, I finished med pass in about five minutes, then I sat at the nurses station and wait for the charge nurse to tell me what to do. She walked down the hall twice for something else like nothing happened. She eventually came up to the desk and told me that the rest of the nurses will take two extra pts of mine. When I gave reports to the charge nurse, she grilled me about the pt I just got for one hour. For example, I have to check in the computer for her what type of dressing the pt has for his cellulitis.

Anyway, I finally left 45 minutes later and by the time I got to the hospital, my father-in-law has already passed away.

Now the more I think about it, the more I became angry. There were no other emergency in the unit that day, why the charge nurse has to take so long to take my report? Why she can't look for the dressing information in the computer herself?

It is the first time this happened to me. I know I can't just leave because it counted as abandoning pts and my license can be suspended. However, is it common practice to expect you to stay 45 minutes when your family memeber is dying? and I'm not even talking about the grandparents.

[naijanurse]

When my father had to have emergency surgery, I agonized over finishing my shift or leaving. My family tried to downplay how serious the situation was because they knew that if they told me, I would've left right away, and they were concerned about me losing my job. I talked to my charge nurse (at my hospital the charge nurses have their own assignments), and she told me to leave. She said if it were her father she would leave, no questions asked, so she couldn't expect me to stay. I gave her my report sheets and told them to call my cell phone if they had any questions. I was so grateful for their compassion, and got there just as my dad was getting out of surgery.

[MomRN0913]

I will completely honest. If it was a true emergency with my daughter or father, I would be gone in a hot second. Luckily, I know my coworkers would just pick up where I left off and something they couldn't figure out, they would call me about.I would risk my license and job for the 2 people I live for.

[Elladora]

I'm so sorry for you loss and that you are having to deal with work issues on top of that. While it's too late for your situation, I think there is a huge opportunity for improvement on your unit. Perhaps you can use this as "I don't want ANYONE else to have to go through what I did. How can we fix this?" It's unfortunate and sad that you were not able to leave immediately but it sounds like no one quite knew what to do. Given a little planning and preparation, this should be fixable. Where I work, we can leave within 5 minutes if need be. We give a quick report to a co-worker and everyone readjusts their workload. The staff member that needs to leave, goes. We either cover and try to call in replacement staff. Part of what makes this work so well is that people have never abused it and only do this in a genuine emergency.

As others have said, I would hold off making any huge decisions until you have had a chance to grieve.

[Nurse Ebere M.]

I'm so very sorry to hear about your loss. That was not cool at all and I agree with hiddencatRN, if something like that would happen we let you go when you have to go. In a situation like that you have to do everything you can to help your employees get to their loved ones. There are no 2^nd chances when the time comes to say good bye.