One of the reasons I'll never be in administration is that I am completely incapable of keeping the spiciness at bay enough to be a Real Professional Adult (tm). I know this about myself and it's never been a problem before, mostly because I know exactly what I want out of my nursing career and it doesn't include being admin.
I turn in a summary report at the end of each of my charge shifts. Nothing super complicated, just an email with any weird happenings, broken or missing equipment, and a list of any activations or transfers. Well, I came off quite possibly the worst shift of my career a few nights ago. I'm pretty sure I said this about another shift recently, but whatever that shift was like was completely demolished by this disaster. It was a perfect shitstorm of critically low staffing, trauma activations, and incredibly acute and complex patients. The most terrible part of the shift was the low staffing part - for a well known trauma hospital, we had fewer than fifteen beds open on a Saturday night, plus missing staff for the rapid track/triage portion of the unit that normally sees about 50% of our volume.
Anyway, I got in to work knowing it was going to be terrible, but we all said a word to the trauma gods hoping for a smooth night. Alas it was not to be. At 1906, our first trauma activation rolled through the doors. At 1945, the second. The third, may an hour or two later. Lots of trauma transfers in. A fun little medical intubation or two. Around bar closing time, our fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh traumas came in within an hour or so. Our rapid track was at a 15:1 ratio for the single nurse out there for most of the night. And just for that little extra razzle dazzle, another massive trauma in the wee hours of the morning. It was relentless.
So at 0730 I fired off quite possibly the spiciest shift report ever, railing against the unsafe staffing levels, the lack of planning ahead for getting traumas when we're a trauma center, and problem of all of our medics having to sit on psych patients instead of being actual medics. It was a brutal email. And it goes to not just our ER administration, but the hospital administration too. I knew that. I'm not sorry about it. But BOY HOWDY does a very spicy email highlighting horribly unsafe nights really light a fire under some people.
The next day saw multiple follow up emails, and today I had a meeting with our director about it. It was...interesting.
Next post will be the fallout from the spicy email saga and why exactly I'm not cut out for admin. It's a wild ride!
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But in the meantime, please enjoy this picture of my now planted garden...which is currently under frost cloth because spring somehow still isn't fully here yet in North Texas and it's too cold out for the plants these next couple of nights. Come on, spring!
4 comments:
I love how a very spicy email about truths that have existed for ages/could have been predicted come as a great big bloody surprise to admin. Sigh! Good luck with the follow up because none of this shit should be a surprise to anyone who was conscious in admin over the last few years!
This is me. But for much much lower stakes. ("You don't want me on faculty senate because the university would HATE our department.")
Good for you! I hope your email ends up saving lives.
ugh. Sorry you had such an awful night. I was not cut out for administration either, zero regrets. I'm sure your email was a wake up call to your clipboard commandos. Not. Likely it will result in routing your future emails only to your immediate clipboard carrier so he/she/they can sanitize further communications to the holy office dwellers.
Glad you called them out. I am way up North and also waiting on spring for my garden. Spring has been sloooow this year.
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