Argh. I had a shift from HELL yesterday and it has left me in quite a funk. I am on a PCCU floor and the patients are generally able to ambulate, but have multiple lines, chest tubes, drains etc and need assistance to the bathroom simply to keep from dislodging all this stuff. Obviously the biggest challenge is the elderly, who also have a walker and need extra support, are super slow, etc. I had three of those yesterday and every single one of them, no matter what I went in the room for, wanted to use the restroom every time I went in. One of them wanted me to wait at the bedside, as they were on hold with their MD office to cancel an appointment they had forgotten about and got quite impatient that I would not stand there at the bedside waiting for their issue to be taken care of before starting the tedious, lengthy process of lining up all the tubes and lines so they would not get pulled out before fetching the walker, at which time another set of adjustments had to be made.
These little potty trips took for.ev.er. I am sure it was just a misalignment of the stars that I got three of these patients at once, who all had multiple med times, blood sugar checks and all the usual things that clutter up a shift. One of them would only allow me to toilet her and shunned letting the tech help. And with as frequently as I had to go into these rooms, even with clustering care, I was running like a mad woman. My Fitbit said I went 6 miles at work yesterday.
What do you do in these situations? By the end of the shift I was ready to pull my hair out. Literally not ONE med got given on time yesterday. As we were doing bedside handoff at the end of the day, one of them asked me again to take her. I asked her to wait until the end of report and then the oncoming nurse or tech would be happy to help her. It felt mean, but geez. I understand they were afraid to wait to ask when they actually had to go because of the time it took to organize everything, but with that many, that often....I was so frustrated I was ready to cry. I didn't even open a chart until 1 PM.
How do you handle these situations? Is there any way to prevent or manage the chaos yesterday was? I have been a nurse for a few years now but never had a shift this bad. I can't imagine telling a person who asks to go to the restroom "no" or saying "I will call the tech for you".....but honestly, I could not get on top of ANYTHING with all these requests going on. Advice? On more than half the requests the patient said they didn't have to go but "may as well try". Gah.
