Beatings will continue until morale improves...

Yeah, that's the kind of attitude around Travel Hospital these days. The crush of sick flu patients, the plethora of sissypants not-sick flu patients, a director who is kind of the worst, ridiculous rules implemented from the office lords, and the WORST EMAR EVER (I'm looking at you, Meditech) has combined to make the past few weeks near unbearable.

Fortunately I really like most of my coworkers. We all love to go to breakfast after shift and drink mimosas and bitch about work. They make it tolerable. Especially the one who put this up on the istat troubleshooting manual...

*Sorry I had to crop out some text. Had to preserve the semi-anonymity I'm trying desperately to hold on to. Also I don't know how to work photoshop to redact some words.

**Do you know how hard it is for me to spell anonymity correctly the first time? Damn near impossible. That one word is my Achilles' Heel when it comes to the English language.

Drugs are bad, kids.

Scene: Young woman comes in after a near-respiratory arrest following a night of fancy heroin indulgence. A dose of narcan brought her back to the land of the breathing.

Coworker: Ma'am, were you trying to hurt yourself tonight?
Patient: Fuck no, I got a little kid at home to think about!

We moved her into the hallway once it became clear she was going to be just fine, to watch her before she could go back to her little bundle of joy at the house. She was ever so grateful to be alive and kept loudly shouting out how happy she was to be in the ER, and how thankful she was to have met us. She came up with nice pet names for us all and even composed little ditties about how sweet we were. It was a serenade of kindness, let me tell you.

***
 As I was leaving the next morning the charge nurse brought a note into the break room, which had been found on a set of discharge papers.

This came from the girl next to the heroin overdose. Proof that there are, in fact, good people in the world. And that sometimes they come into the ER.

Burnout

I haven't been blogging a lot recently because I'm legitimately burnt out on the overwhelming number of stupid, mundane complaints we've been seeing in the ER. My current workplace sees an average of 250-280 patients a day, which normally feels like nothing because they've got a top rate first-track and a pretty good system for patient flow. But the onset of flu season means they're seeing around 300, 325 a day and the majority of them are not actual flu patients.

Our numbers have been so high because everyone and their mother is coming in for the common cold. Wait times are up because the fast track area is deluged and can't keep up, so minor patients get overflowed to the core. The core docs then have to see them, and a normal minor complaint visit time of 45 minutes becomes three hours because the doc has to see all those pesky rupturing AAAs and septic pneumonia and chest pain patients first. Then the minor patient gets angry and demands to see a doctor, and then the staff all hates them because they're being a dick on top of being in the ER for the common cold, and then no one is happy. It's a never ending battle, and I am so ready for flu season to be over because right now I hate people and I hate all ER patients and I'm so sick of them that I transition from nice nurse to cynical bastard within the first ten minutes of my shift. All I want is to take care of a real sick patient instead of the BS stuff but we're so understaffed that when I'm in the Cardiac (read: sick) station, I can't keep up because I've got three ICU holds in addition to my other couple of patients.

It's enough to wear anyone down, seriously.

So last night I was working up a near-syncope patient brought in by her daughter. The critical-thinking side of me was doing the usual 'what could this be?' rundown, but the cynical side of me was thinking that it was probably bullshit. And then I looked down at the EKG as it was printing, and noticed big fat elevations in II, III, and aVF. That in addition to the simultaneous dinging of the heart monitor because her HR dropped to 32 woke me right up. I called a doc to come sign up for her, we activated the STEMI team, started some more IVs, gave some meds, did compressions for a hot second when she arrested, and thirty one minutes later deposited her on the cath lab table.

I had the patient for a total of thirty seven minutes. This morning I stopped by her ICU room to see how she was doing. Still sedated after emergency bypass surgery, but alive and expected to make a full recovery.

That, people, is why I am a nurse. It's just enough encouragement to help me wade through the mountains of minor complaints and verbal abuse just a little longer. Hopefully I too will make a full burnout recovery and resume both the compassion and the blogging.

Everybody poops

I'd lie and say I don't poop at work, but, well...that's a lie. I totally do. But I go to the bathroom farthest away from everyone at 4am in the deserted part of the hospital I and make sure I'm stealthy. I don't go to the only bathroom in the only break room that holds the only coffee pot for the entire ER. So I know damn well this wasn't directed at me.

But seriously. Who in the world sends a work order for probable shitsmell?!

Courtesy flushes, y'all.