this is my life?

typically my days begin at 5:30 when my alarm goes off, i try to avoid the inevitable and generally hit the snooze button once giving me a whole extra 7 minuntes, so in truth i should say my days begin at 5:37. then it's shower, coffee, dress, run frantically out of the house because i hit the snooze button and took to long in the shower. I get to work at 7 am, or just before so as to avoid the glare of the night shift, they like to act like they are the victims because they had to stay up all night when in truth 90% of night shift is made up of nurses who specifically have requested to work nights, and mostly because they cannot handle the stress of a day shift.

after report is done i then face the next 12 hours of being waitress, transport, public relations, therapist, babysitter, secretary, oh and i'm also still the nurse, which means i still need to assess my patients, give medications, get blood or other specimens for the doctors, start IV's, hang blood, change dressings, suction out trach's, and whatever else those crazy doctors have decided they need to do with these kids. (including but not limited to colon clean outs, enemas, describing in detail a patients stool, retrieving "nasopharyangeal aspirates" which is a fancy way of saying they want you so suck boogers out of the kids nose and send it to the lab, all of which things are about as much fun as they sound) the worst though, is the paperwork. i think every nurse will complain about the paperwork. i have been tempted many times to write something like:

Nurse Focus Note: D) Pt. is 6 mo old male, admitted for R/O sepsis, VSS, afebrile, purple and green lesions to body noted, non-tender, round and approx. 3 in. in diameter occurring over total body surface. small bony prominences noted on forehead, appendage from the coccyx increased in length this shift, current length 63cm. A)VS Q4, measure strict I&O, Measure tail length BID, Meds given per MD orders, IVF running, Cont. on CRPO2 monitor, MD notified of new length and lesions, family updated on POC. R) pt. resting quietly with family @BS, no apparent pain or distress. No new lesions noted, no increase in size of current lesions or tail. Good PO and UOP, approx 4cc/kg. Afebrile. Will cont. to monitor. K. Corrigan, RN

i wonder how long it would take before someone noticed it, my guess is never. that's how important nursing notes are. if the doc's have any questions you can bet they aren't going to flip through the chart to find it themselves they are clearly just going to hunt you down and ask you themselves.

this is all just a broad overview of what i do, no one can even imagine how stressful your day can become over something like a baby not peeing for 5 hours and you can't get a hold of the doctor because they're in clinic and the person covering for them is not around and all the third year will tell you is that you need to page so and so for the answer, or a medication that was supposed to be given at 8am for a kids seizure disorder is still not on the floor and the pharmacy hasn't sent it down and now it's 3 in the afternoon and every time you call pharmacy just keep telling you that it's coming, or my personal favorite, when you get overhead paged to go to 4 different rooms, all consecutively done and then the same person pages you to the front desk to answer a phone call....and you are standing directly behind the person paging you the whole time. it's not that i think everyone is mentally challenged it's just that i think they turn off any form of logic or critical thinking skills they may have once had, as soon as they start their shift.

so if you are ever so unfortunate as to find yourself or a loved one in the hospital please remember before you start bad-mouthing your nurse for not getting your jello cup STAT, that she is probably juggling about a thousand different things at that same moment and changing linens, giving baths, getting ice water or jello cups are not high on her list of priorities. especially when she has patient (A) who is receiving a blood transfusion, patient (B) who has suddenly become tachypnic with decreased urine output, and patient (C) who needs to have his trach suctioned out every hour or he will develop a very large mucus plug. I am not a personal slave, i am a human person with dignity and deserve to not feel guilty about going to the bathroom or eating food!

this obviously comes after a very bad week where all of this clearly happened, it was such a bad week that i actually cried a little in front of a stranger, but the reality is that this happens every week. when people get sick, or their child gets sick, they loose all sense of proportion and reality. people begin to think that they are the only people in the entire hospital and start demanding ridiculous things of you. i have to constantly check my emotions and say a little prayer asking God for patience otherwise i will loose it and you would probably find me wandering around the parking lot all tangled up in IV tubing attacking any one who came near me with an ambu bag

nursing is very much one of the thankless jobs, and one where people remember the bad things that happened much quicker than the good, but regardless of all this i love my job. it's definately those times when someone does say thank you after you've given up all hope of it that totally make things worth it. i may have 5 days off and i may be so thankful for them and feel like i totally deserve them but i'm excited to go to work at the end of everything. (alright i realize that last little bit was pretty cheesy but i don't want anyone to think that i hate my job or that i think it's horrible in any way.)