Well, I will say, it's hard to get too much into an existential crisis when you have patients like the one I had on Thursday.
Fifty-something schizophrenic guy who had passed out and fallen on his arm comes in, already fighting with EMS. Probably yelled at me about 50 times to bring him something to eat, each time I told him I couldn't until the doctor came to see him. He then preceded to ask everyone else who walked by for food, and then screamed at every male in scrubs "Doctor! Doctor! HEY! Come in here!". Um. Yeah. Nope, those are medics, but nice try. Any time I walked by his room, he yelled at me for various things, including a back rub, help holding his penis in a urinal*, help calling his sister, who he referred to as his "robot" (seriously, WTF?), and, you guessed it, something to eat.
Naturally this was the type of the day where it took the doctors 4 hours to see patients (not exaggerating), so the highlight of my day really came when this man urinated all over the bed and himself and then refused to let me clean him up or remove his pee soaked pants until I brought him a food tray. Wow. It took about 30 minutes of wrestling and bargaining to get him to take the pee pants off- luckily I got help from one of our housekeeping guys, who in no way had to do that, but he's just an awesome dude. In the process, we both got cussed out, kicked, and scratched while the patient informed us that we were going to jail. It was certainly a pain, but now whenever I start feeling bad about sucking at my job, I can at least take comfort in the fact that I don't willingly soak myself with urine to punish others.**
*During the struggle later on, I found out that his hand strength was just fine. Gross.
**Chances are, I'm going to hell for finding this funny.
Will I go to hell for totally agreeing with you and thinking you should bring the Hammer of Thor onto these numbskulls?
ReplyDeleteUgh....why are there always some that think an ER is a restaurant & that nurses are their servants?
ReplyDeleteI had a guy that was in with pancreatitis, blood alcohol level of 335...of which he denies ever drinking. Is pissed because we have him on clear liquids...pissed to the point of yelling & complaining. I wanted to yell back "Stop spending your money on alcohol & buy yourself some food instead", but I didn't. I silently prayed he'd sign out AMA. :) Does that make me a bad nurse??
I think technically, then, we would both be going to Hades. Although we would have the satisfaction of Hammer of Thor crushing, so that's something.
ReplyDeleteHOLY CRAP I KNOW. Oh man. It makes me so crazy when people get here in the damn ambulance, and immediately want to eat. Like, what? Did you think EMS was going to pull through McDonalds for you? Why didn't you think of this before you called them?
Haha. If that makes you a bad nurse, I don't think there are many good nurses on the earth.