Pest control

Let it never be said that I don't care about my patients' wellbeing.

Four AM today found me frantically swinging a large blue disposable (clean) diaper at a humongous fly buzzing around the room of a demented little old lady. Naturally because she's demented, she thinks it's not a fly but instead a bat with an appetite for her head. She starts crying and calling out for help and hiding under the covers because it's going to swoop in and eat her hearing aid any hot second. I'm trying to either shoo it out of the room or crush it into oblivion with this sad diaper. Obviously there is no fly swatter to be found in this high tech ER so a Depends it is. Then the diaper starts to fall apart and fling little bits of stuff everywhere, because of course, so I move on to a weaponized towel in hopes I have better aim with that. I don't.

The security guard walks by and spends five seconds convinced I'm crazy, then takes pity on me and joins in the fight. By now this debacle has attracted a crowd of nurses and techs and even a doctor who have pulled up chairs, made popcorn, and are holding up signs ranking our swings on a scale of 1-10. The son of the patient is standing just outside the door and is laughing hysterically at me. Like, tears running down his face, might possibly pee his pants laughing.

This fly has now taken up residence in the very top corner of the wall, out of reach of every implement of destruction we can find. So the security guard makes a ball out of gloves and starts throwing it at the fly to make it come down lower. I catch the glove rebound, take aim, and let loose a MLB-worthy pitch. This time my aim is true and the glove hits this fly square on. When it falls to the ground, sure enough there is a smooshed insect outline up on the wall and I am not even kidding when I say it was twice as big as the already-huge live fly was. A cheer goes up from the staff gathered, the son pulls himself together enough to start clapping, and I mop the sweat off my brow. Thank God this ordeal is finally over.

And I'll be damned if the patient doesn't pop her head out of the blanket shield and ask me why the hell I'm just standing there in her room. "If you're going to sneak in here, child, at least bring me a breakfast tray!" she says.

You guys, I can't even. I CAN'T. EVEN.

Demands

Look, I can appreciate a well-spun tale of woe. If you really put some effort into it, mention all the right things, shed a tear or two and cleverly zero in on a single complaint we might reward your effort with a work up and a single dose of that D medicine before booting you out. CYA medicine at it's best, y'all.

But if you list eleven chief complaints, and one of those is literally "I want some dalaudah or I'll sue," well....

I'm still quaking in fear over whether or not she's gonna get my license revoked as threatened when security escorted her off the premises.

Vouchers

There are some things that I for sure don't like about the hospital I'm at now, but I gotta say...on the whole, it's a fairly sweet place to work. They just don't take bullshit from patients. At all. I've seen patients get arrested for threatening staff, get arrested for trespassing after being discharged, thrown out of the waiting room for harassing other patients, and discharged from the triage window by the doc after a medical screening exam. I see patients get discharged scrip-less when they demand more dilaudid. I've watched a doc lay a verbal smackdown on a belligerent family member who had reduced a tech to tears. But the best thing I like? They don't tolerate handing out taxi vouchers to just everyone...you've gotta have a damn good reason for needing one. And for the chronically taxi-needy...well, they only get one a year.

The taxi issue might seem like a minor thing compared to the rest, but trust me - when you're trying to discharge that malingering patient, or the guy who's been here 17 times already this year for the same complaint, it's so nice to be able to emphatically decline the request for a taxi voucher. I had this happen to me last night. A frequent flyer patient was angling hard to get a voucher, and Home Hospital would be all like "well okaaaayyy I guess you can have another one but this is the LAST TIME, mmmkay?" and they'd get one three days later anyway. Not this hospital. Not this time. He asked for one, I looked up his chart history, and was like "Sorry Charlie, you had one ten months ago. See ya!" And he left! No argument!

It's the small victories, folks. Seriously.


****
Also, because I'm obsessed with this website...

When my patient thanks me for all that I do
I'm just like

[credit #whatshouldwecallnursing]