WHY WHY WHY....

So this is my whiney post....in that I NEED TO VENT.....

To cover staffing (since many nurses are being laid off...who would have thought that would EVER happen??? Nursing is one of the most stable job fields in the country!), my manager has moved me to what is called "midshift".  Technically you come in from noon to midnight. You either get a group to care for, assist with what was usually fast track (except fast track is closed as that wing is reserved for the CoVid-19 patients we never got, or you do Triage. Now I like doing triage, it get's hairy when a lot of people sign in at one time, but you get the most interesting conversations and  back-stories with people. Sounds ok right???? Well the unanticipated problem is that mid-shift, means the busy time, and with us running the entire shift 1 RN and 1 tech short, you hit the floor running. Everyone is taking turns triaging , unless their patient is circling the drain...and guess what, the day nurses get to CHOOSE which patient's YOU take over...so...yup...the needy, the confused, the patient's with lots of stat orders...guess which one you are getting...ALL OF THEM. The easy peasy, give a Tylenol and discharge...THOSE are not your patient's...Put on your BIG girl panties...because you arn't getting a potty break or a lunch break until 11 pm tonight, if you are lucky.

So Friday I had one of those shifts that makes you wanna pull your hair out, except I didn't have to because the little old lady in 4 was doing it for me. I gave her her call bell when I got there and showed her how to use it...and believe me, she took to the teaching well. Her provider and family members had all skedaddled before I got there...and now I know why...they needed to REST! To say she was independent is an understatement. To say she was impatient...well a rattlesnake had nothing on her. To be honest, I felt quite sorry for her...for the 1st 2 hours. But after being scratched, clawed and my hair pulled, I was not quite as happy to run to her room. I got there at 12 noon and she went to the floor as an admit at 8 pm. I will say that was the busiest 8 hours I have had in a while. I clocked 16,652 steps .... 30 steps at a time from the nurse station to her bedside, get whatever she wanted, come back, go back to the station, for her to think of something else she needed. Nothing satisfied her. Get her up, put her down, put my head up, put my head down, get me a drink, get me a fan, sit me up, lay me down, put me on the potty, why do I need medication, why do I need an IV, why can't you feed me, where is the food, why don't you have food, why don't you just stay in here. Why do you raise your voice when I scratch you....it hurt?? Oh look you are bleeding, why did you put your hair up like that ? (after she managed to get my ponytail with both hands as she drug me down onto the potty chair with her...LOL) She may have only weighed about 170, but my back was killing me by the time I took her upstairs!

I had gotten a TDC pt in bed 6, which is pretty much the room we use for any incarcerated patient, because it is at the end of the hall, and we don't have people walking by trying to see in the room and rubber-necking.  After about 4 hrs of hearing me in and out of the other room, the officers were laughing at me...well until they saw the little lady was actually drawing blood on me (scratches)....dang...anyway, I finally got her comfortable, or she was a wore out as I was, because I had her sleeping when I took her upstairs...and it wasn't from medication. Upstairs, could not find the receiving nurse, so I put this lady in her bed, by myself and called for the nurse to the bedside so I could do a safe hand-off.

After lady in 4 went up, the rest of the night was pretty much ok, until I got the trama, guy with abrasions literally all over most his body from a motor vehicle incident. Went to CT with him, did all the usual stuff, IV, VITALS, so on. Came back, it was 10:00 pm, 1 hr to I'm off, still had  no lunch break after 11 hrs, I did drink some tea so I wouldn't go into renal failure...anyway, now I have all these abraisons that have to have asphalt scrubbed out of them. Horribly painful for him, labor intensive for me...and thank God a tech had arrived, We worked side by side....Poor guy. Anyway, by the time 12 pm rolled around, I still needed 30 min to finish charting (1/2 a peanut butter sandwich in my hand!!!! Manna from heaven.). A storm was rolling in and I was trying to beat the wind and rain. I got out...soaked with sweat, exhausted and drove home. Not too much rain driving, missed the dead hawg in the road (I've hit 2 dead hawgs and messed up my car so I am getting better at finding them in the dark.LOL.)

Got home just as the storm hit, and it was a dozy. We got 2 inches of rain, mixed with  a little hail I think. I had sweated through all my clothes and wanted a shower, but it was lightening and thundering and the power was popping on and off (we have a well pump) so a shower was out, I had to take a basin bath. Dave told me I stunk...of work sweat...and that he had never in the whole 14 years he knew me to come home smelling bad...lol...I told him I earned every cent of my money that night...and had the sweat to prove it.