I would like some honest input from my peers. I live in an area that has only two major hospitals. I switched from the bigger of the two to the smaller hospital due to schedule changes - my former hospital did not offer evening shift, only 12's and I could no longer work night shift for various reasons. For the most part, I like my new job very much. The pace is a little slower most nights (a looooot slower) and I just love what I do, so i'm adjusting. It is hard at times because they do a lot of things differantly but I'm getting used to it. Oftentimes my new co-workers talk about my old place of employment in a very negative manner - basically that "they" are a bunch of idiots....I don't recall any of my old co-workers ever mentioning my current place of employment as we were usually to busy running our tails off....Last night I was working with one other nurse who is fairly new (6 months of experience). There are always two nurses per 3-11 and 11-7 shift. She is really quite good and a pleasure to work with. I got a call from the ER and they told me that we had a patient of Dr. _____'s coming in (this doc works at both hospitals so I know him.) They gave me the following info: Pt is 24 weeks, states her water broke, is having contractions, states she has the urge to push, is in a lot of pain. I tell my coworker to set up a room, to get IV supplies ready, I call the nursery to give them a heads' up. I page the Doc so I can give him a heads up as ER told me she would be arriving any minute and coming straight to me. There was a lot of confusion as to who was on call with the group that I called - there are three groups, the one that I called happens to be the only one that also worked at my old hospital, so the all know me, and I've never had a problem with them. Anyway, during the phone calls to get to the correct on-call doc, the patient is brought up via stretcher accompanied by the paramedics. She is screaming, crying, scared to death. I follow them into the room, help transfer her to the bed. Take off her pants, tell Marcy to establish IV access and to draw labs. Put oxygen via face mask on her, try to calm her down (she's crying and telling us that she's hurting and feels pressure). I note no bleeding -ask her if she thinks her water broke, she says she felt something come out earlier. She then says she fell. I palpate her abdomen and it feels moderately firm. Is she bleeding internally? I look at vital signs...fine for now. She looks about 24 weeks, but we have no prenatal records on her. Whole other story... Within minutes, we have labs drawn, an IV going, we've position her in left lat trend, oxygen per face mask, and thankfully get fetal heart tones that sound great. We establish a history. During all this I got word that the MD was on his way. As he walked into the room and recognized the patient. He privately told me that she has done this "act" before and hoped that was the case this time. He performs a pelvic exam with speculum, orders IV pain meds, performs ultrasound. Everything looks fine. He tells me, good job..at least my new nurse coworker will know what to do in case something happens for real. We'll watch her overnight. He was very pleasant and acted relieved that the patient was ok and left after about 10-15 minutes. Signed the orders and left. The new shift comes in and I give report. They tell me that I better be lucky that this patient didn't belong to the other group (the group that I don't have a lot of experience with) because they would have chewed my a--. They tried to make me feel like a complete idiot for calling the doc before the patient was in-house and I should have done a complete assessment on her before calling him. They say this isn't like my other hospital and we have a lot of "princesses" here. They say, "well, you know that group (the one I called) better then we do (the group i called rarely delivers at our hospital and prefers my old one. This new hospital is private by the way, the old one is not. Should I have not called the doc? Normally, I would always completely assess the patient, but she came up via ambulance and with what the ER was telling me I figured the doc would have to come in anyway....Did I over react? As I left, my new co-worker was very angry. She told me that she was proud of the way we handled the situation. I had tears in my eyes in the parking lot because they were so critical of my actions...what would you have done?
Absolutely you did the right thing ! We are the patients advocate and it doesnt matter what others may say. We are always to think of the patients safety as number one priority! With what you were told there was an emergency coming in and you needed all hands on deck! It was good that everything went well but what if it hadnt and there was only you and your co worker there. Better to be on the safe side always!! Always go with your gut feeling . Great work. People will always be ready to bag you but their not the ones there at the time or the ones standing in court if things dont go well.
cathcam1
1 Post
Absolutely you did the right thing ! We are the patients advocate and it doesnt matter what others may say. We are always to think of the patients safety as number one priority! With what you were told there was an emergency coming in and you needed all hands on deck! It was good that everything went well but what if it hadnt and there was only you and your co worker there. Better to be on the safe side always!! Always go with your gut feeling . Great work. People will always be ready to bag you but their not the ones there at the time or the ones standing in court if things dont go well.