Tuesday, September 14, 2004
He could bend his arm, just not so it was bent all the way up... gah.. so no, I wasn't being the total bitch nurse after all.
I had a bad day. It didn't start well, one of the girls had got in trouble because she hadn't had oxygen on a man with a PCA, and she blamed it on me and the person i was working with last night when I KNOW that he had oxygen on when I left, so I told the NUM that and it was all okay with her. Then I heard a commotion as a confused guy tried to dive over the side rail on his bed. They got him back and bed and the nurse (B for the purposes of this telling) went to lunch, telling me to feed him his lunch, well they had just given him valium and morphine, so he was out of it, I could get him to wake up with some pain stimuli but not much else. So I left him and told one of the senior staff about it. Then they asked me to accompany him over to EEG (where they test for seizure activity), so i said okay, he was rousable before I left, but fell pretty heavily asleep just after we left the ward. We took him over and the staff asked me to stay in case he got aggressive again, so i sat down, I was starting to get worried about him because he was very heavily asleep and I was counting his respirations and pulse rate. They did the test which fortunately only took 10 minutes and I made a move to get him back to the ward as soon as possible.
I got him back, gaining the attention of two senior staff members (including nurse B who was looking after him) and told them I was not happy with his condition, I went and got some oxygen and nurse B came in and I got out of her way thinking that she would do his obs first thing. As I left I heard her attempting to wake the patient, she was very loud, so the other senior nurse started heading into the room, nurse B told her that the man was conscious so she didn't go in. I left to go to hand over and while I was in there, there was a MET called, (Medical Emergency Team) and it was the same guy. One of the other nurses and gone into the room and called the MET team seeing as though the original nurse didn't. GAH!
In hindsight, I should have called a MET when we were in EEG, either that or I should have called it straight away when I got back. Never the less nurse B blamed me for not doing obs on this man... I mean, for goodness sakes, how was I sposed to do that in EEG, whey have the EEG machine and that is it! There is no blood pressure cuffs, no oxygen saturation machines, there is not even any oxygen ports so I couldn't put oxygen on him! He was intubated and taken to ICU, little to say. Ok... I am feeling responsible for something I probably couldn't have changed, he was likely to have crashed no matter where or when, if it hadn't happened just after I got him back to the ward it would have happened later this afternoon. I just can't help feeling bad. I have written it all down for the Nursing manager, she believed me over nurse B as nurse B has apparently had problems like this before. At least I am covered as far as I can be.
Anyways, I was a mess for the rest of the shift, but I guess I got everything done.
Am gonna go and attempt to get some sleep before I go back to the grind tomorrow.
Laters
I had a bad day. It didn't start well, one of the girls had got in trouble because she hadn't had oxygen on a man with a PCA, and she blamed it on me and the person i was working with last night when I KNOW that he had oxygen on when I left, so I told the NUM that and it was all okay with her. Then I heard a commotion as a confused guy tried to dive over the side rail on his bed. They got him back and bed and the nurse (B for the purposes of this telling) went to lunch, telling me to feed him his lunch, well they had just given him valium and morphine, so he was out of it, I could get him to wake up with some pain stimuli but not much else. So I left him and told one of the senior staff about it. Then they asked me to accompany him over to EEG (where they test for seizure activity), so i said okay, he was rousable before I left, but fell pretty heavily asleep just after we left the ward. We took him over and the staff asked me to stay in case he got aggressive again, so i sat down, I was starting to get worried about him because he was very heavily asleep and I was counting his respirations and pulse rate. They did the test which fortunately only took 10 minutes and I made a move to get him back to the ward as soon as possible.
I got him back, gaining the attention of two senior staff members (including nurse B who was looking after him) and told them I was not happy with his condition, I went and got some oxygen and nurse B came in and I got out of her way thinking that she would do his obs first thing. As I left I heard her attempting to wake the patient, she was very loud, so the other senior nurse started heading into the room, nurse B told her that the man was conscious so she didn't go in. I left to go to hand over and while I was in there, there was a MET called, (Medical Emergency Team) and it was the same guy. One of the other nurses and gone into the room and called the MET team seeing as though the original nurse didn't. GAH!
In hindsight, I should have called a MET when we were in EEG, either that or I should have called it straight away when I got back. Never the less nurse B blamed me for not doing obs on this man... I mean, for goodness sakes, how was I sposed to do that in EEG, whey have the EEG machine and that is it! There is no blood pressure cuffs, no oxygen saturation machines, there is not even any oxygen ports so I couldn't put oxygen on him! He was intubated and taken to ICU, little to say. Ok... I am feeling responsible for something I probably couldn't have changed, he was likely to have crashed no matter where or when, if it hadn't happened just after I got him back to the ward it would have happened later this afternoon. I just can't help feeling bad. I have written it all down for the Nursing manager, she believed me over nurse B as nurse B has apparently had problems like this before. At least I am covered as far as I can be.
Anyways, I was a mess for the rest of the shift, but I guess I got everything done.
Am gonna go and attempt to get some sleep before I go back to the grind tomorrow.
Laters
7:56 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
Writing since January 2003!
web-counter? Maybe one day
BJ T now was S
Born in April on the 21st!
Australian but living in the USA.
Allison
Sharmaine
Dande
Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]
1 2 3 4 5