Babysitting

So it's a well known fact that I'm not a big fan of children. They don't like me, I don't like them; it's a mutual thing. Usually when I walk into a room containing a child, said child takes one look at me and starts to cry. That held true all throughout today. Overall, I just try to steer clear of kids and any situation which puts me in charge of kids. That said...

I had a little 14 month old patient, and no one in the ER could get an IV in this poor kid. I call peds up and ask if I can bring him over so they can try too. When we get over there, the two peds nurses turn to me and say, "okay, if you can just man the desk and answer the phones and help anyone who needs it, we'll go stick this kid." In my head I'm thinking crapcrapcrapcrapholycrapthisisbadverybad. Out loud I inform them that I'm still on orientation, and maybe it's not a good idea for me to run the peds ship for an undetermined amount of time.

The nurses assure me it's okay, and saunter off to a locked room with my patient. And there I am...by myself...at a very large nursing station that is devoid of any other professional. The phones are ringing. Parents have questions. Doctors walk through and ask me things. Visitors ring in from the hallway. I start to sweat.

Yes people, I manned the peds desk by myself for 25 minutes today. I'm not sure if that's even legal, given my lack of peds expertise. At any rate, nothing catastrophic happened, I managed to successfully answer each phone call, and avoided looking like a tool to the doctors. Whew. I hope I am never ever ever in that situation again. It's a wonder the kids couldn't smell my fear from their rooms.

Man, kids and I don't mix well.