Thursday, June 18, 2009

night and day difference, literally.

So, a while back I talked about a day I had where I had way the hell too many sick people at once and I was super scared one of them was gonna die on me? Well, I had another one last night, but amazingly- it was totally fine. Not to say that it didn't still suck- I had a guy with a blood pressure of 270/160, a 6 year old with a possible concussion, a patient who the doctor needed urine on who couldn't get up and a guy with a uncontrollable vomiting, a possible seizure before he got there, and a heart rate of 140 for some reason. The guy with the high blood pressure ended up being an ICU hold all freaking night and I had to titrate multiple drips that I had never given for him. The nurses last night, even the ones that weren't on my team, helped me to look up the limits on the drips and how much I should titrate up by, etc. Just as soon as I would start to get swamped and overwhelmed with the tasks I had to do, I would walk out of a room to get them started and half of them would be done.
The guy who works charge half the time when I'm here totally rules, too- he'll come start IVs and ambulances for all the nurses when he knows we're behind. It's just so comforting to have backup- it was never like that on days and it makes a huge difference. Not only did people rarely help on days but half of them were watching and waiting for me to screw up; on nights everyone genuinely wants to help and will drop what they're doing to if you're in bad shape. I really was getting miserable and thinking about getting out of here as soon as my contract went up, but I'm super happy now. It's amazing what a difference there is when you're on a good team.

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