When to call in sick

[KalipsoRed21, BSN, RN]

I'm going to vent here. This weekend, starting on Friday, we were really short in the ER. I offered to move my schedule around to help. (I picked up Friday. I was already scheduled Sat., Sun., Mon.) I started to feel sick Friday night after my shift, but I decided to wake up and see how I felt. I felt like crap on Saturday, but since I knew we were running short this weekend I decided to go to work. I made it through my shift, but I did got slower than normal. My charge was well aware that I did not feel good. Yet she found it reasonable to ***** to my manager that I had 'delayed' care in a couple of my patients.

The delayed care occured in one patient because I forgot to go make labels for blood I drew on a kid. Totally my fault and I feel bad about that. The second one though I feel pretty justified about.

We rate our patients 1-5 in level of care. 1 is a code and 5 is something a patient could have waited and gone to see their doctor for. I normally take care of 4 patients. I had a '5' that needed and IV and antibiotics for a tooth abcess. I didn't notice the order for 20 minutes after it was put in. On my way to get the antibiotics for the '5' I notice and EMS going into a room that I just discharged a patient from. I had no warning that I was getting an EMS. As they wheeled in my new patient the EMS told me that my new 82 yr old patient was here for confusion and I noticed that the patient was having troubles focusing and was moving without purpose. There was another nurse standing there who saw my patient, she called the triage nurse to come back and triage my new patient but the triage nurse didn't answer the phone. Then then nurse walked off...I'm guessing because she had to do something instead of help me.

I knew I needed to get an antibiotic for my '5' but I felt that a '2' was something I needed to deal with first. My charge ended up getting upset with me about the delay in care for the '5' that waited and hour to get her antibiotics started. She told me that I should have called for help. That may be so, but I was really more concerned about my new '2' and felt if 2 out of 4 of the nurses I worked with were to busy to come help me then it was a good chance that the other 2 wouldn't be available either.

Not to mention that I was sick and not moving very fast to begin with . I called off the other two days I was suppose to work becuase when I got home Saturday I had an email from my Manager questioning the delay in care of two of my patients. I feel very trapped.

I didn't want to let my department down by being really short handed, but apparently I wasn't helping by coming in sick. I didn't mess up any one's care it was just not as fast as normal on a day that we were OVERWHELMED with very sick patients. We had 12 '2s' at one point in our 12 bed ER....this is very abnormal for our tiny 50 bed rural hospital.

So how do you guys feel about calling off? I tried to do it as little as possible and I'm willing to go to work feeling under the weather to make sure that the pressure is not as bad, but I'm guessing that if I feel slightly under the weather at all I should just call off from now on.

[caliotter3]

I feel you did the best you could under the circumstances, and a whole lot more than most people, because most people would have thought nothing of calling off sooner, or even going home early. Get well so that you can deal with the complaining better when you return. No criticism from me.