The Girl Who Lived

Bad nights at work make it that much harder to blog about the next day, and all because I hate to whine, but last night, was one of the worst.Actually arriving an hour early to work, I decided to wander the massive hospital and see what I could discover. It only took me two minutes to find the ED and I was hooked, however I was quickly asked to leave and ended up escorting a patient back to their room, which happened to be on my unit, so I stayed put and studied up on my EMT stuff. After a decent study period I clocked in and started my shift. I had the good section of the unit, almost all private rooms and lots of discharges.

'The nurses must love me.' I thought. This attitude quickly changed.

Suddenly we are halted from entering one of my patients room, and she is on the call light. I suddenly become aware that doctors are everywhere and I quietly stand by the charge nurses desk to try to figure out whats going on. Guess what? The diagnosis wasa respiratory precaution, (I'm sure one of you can guess which one it was) and since lots of us had been in and out of that room, we had all been exposed. Luckily the staff was awfully quick in fitting us for a respirator, and I had to have the one that looked like a spacesuit. I was scared, and moreover, I was worried. This was my 'dirty unit', and during the rest of the week I work in a 'sterile feild,' I didn't want to miss out on work in the unit I loved.

When I saw the patient I cursed myself for not going in there sooner. I cursed myself for not volunteering to help her, and for being as worried as I let myself be. Here was a human being who was sick, scared and now here we are in space suits, she was human, and we weren't treating her as such. We were treating her like her diagnosis.

I couldn't keep up with the work load, and patients were yelling at me for this. Other aides wouldn't help me with my call lights and I was frusterated. Gearing up took 10 minutes, so getting to my one patient took about 15 minutes. Helping others to the restroom usually took 10 minutes, last night took 20. Things were falling behind and noone wanted to listen.

Report was the most frutsterating. The aides wouldn't listen, they wanted to read what the 'computer said.' Well, the computer was wrong on almost ALL the diagnosis' and was simply for the HUC's purpose. Finally, I had to explain my respiratory precautions patient to the new aide. She was a sweet gal, but she really didn't understand why she needed to go in there at all. "But we will be exposed!" She said.

"Yes, we will, but if you wear this respirator and report that you went in there, then you will be okay, they will fill out the appropriate paperwork and if you have symptoms, call and you will get the time off work." I looked at her and turned off the monitor so that she could look at me. "She is scared. She is sick and she is human." I said slowly, the aide looked confused and I told her the diagnosis. The aide's face fell.

"She has WHAT?!?" she exclaimed. I nodded, that was pretty much my reaction too.

"She is scared. She is sick. It is our JOB to care for her. She is the same as any other patient, you just wear a respirator." As she wrote down the details I sat back in the chair and exhaled slowly. Patient's yelling at me, threats for following simple orders, scary diagnosis', and all the crap in between. I love my job, and last night, I did my job, but not as well as I wanted to. And I HATE that.