Saturday, November 24, 2012

The Annual Influx of Holiday Cheer in the ER

OH SHIT.  I totally forgot how much I freaking hate working around the holidays.  Really, it has very little to do with the fact that I miss the holidays themselves.  My family is pretty flexible and we don't generally do a lot of stuff on the day of anyway.  Naw dude, it is the stuff that happens at work.  
I always think I'm exaggerating it in my head, and I go a whole year without dealing with it and kind of forget it happens, but the holiday season brings the crazy assholes out of the woodwork.  
I wish I could fully do justice to how ridiculous the holiday brand of crazy is without violating the shit our of HIPAA, but holy crap.   I guess crazy really is a misleading word if you're using it in the traditional sense of a less-than-kosher term for people who are genuinely mentally ill.  I guess I should really be using the word cray, which is generally the word that I reserve for people that just act totally foolish and childish who may at some point try to throw in some kind of mental health angle, but only as a means to an end.  These are the patients that think being completely hysterical pains in everyone's ass is going to get them what they want, usually, drugs, attention, or both.  These are the trolliest trolls of the troll genome, and they have never faced a problem they couldn't solve by escalating the DRAMZ.   These are the patients that suck the compassion and life out of you, who make me ask myself if maybe I would have been better suited as a park ranger or a stripper or a barista at Starbucks. And the other night, I seriously had like, 10 of them in one shift.
I can't even count the number of IV resites I wasted my time with when somebody decided they were leaving because they weren't immediately showered with Dilaudid as soon as they stepped out of their car in the parking lot.   The one that really took the cake was seriously just a living, breathing, red flag for drug seeking.  Came in with some sketchy story that kept changing about a traumatic injury, with nary a mark on his body, multiple non-narcotic allergies, controlled substances stolen, from out of town, admitted to going to hospital x for this same problem and was treated so horribly OMGZ, you are totes suing them because BTW you're a lawyer (I know tons of lawyers with sweet homemade tattoos), lots of crying with zero actual tears. Oh, and great job dumbass, it also seems that you went to hospital y for this problem yesterday with the same story not realizing it's in our hospital system and we can see the notes from that visit.   Unfortunately for you, the Dilaudid fairy isn't working today, and all the doctors here actually read your history.  It seems this incident has led to them looking you up on both the state bar website and that state narcotic database, and those two findings combined with your IV pulling shenanigans have you at strike 3, dear. You're going to the house empty handed, unless you can pull out a really impressive performance late in the game.  And sure enough, our lack of compassion and/or generosity with IV narcotics has lead to some pretty dark times and some suicidal thoughts.  MMkay now, if you wanna blow up the call light for drugs you won't get while waiting on the psych consult, go on with your bad self, but now we gotta take all your stuff for your safety, sorry buddy. Enter dramatic family member for act 3, with all his mean-mugging and enabling skillz. And look, he's attempting to wheel you out dramatically with IV still in place because THIS HOSPITAL IS THE WORST.   But sorry, no take backs for suicidal ideation, so we're gonna get the po-po cause we're concerned for your safety and stuff.  I think you can probably guess how the psych consult worked out for the goals he had in mind.  Nope, the psych consult people won't prescribe you Xanax, but thanks for playing.
Yup, imagine this in varying degrees all night and you have what is probably going to be my life for the next month and a half.  My theory has always been that crap like this increases because they're putting on a show for family and friends that aren't paying them enough attention, but now I'm starting to wonder if they aren't trying to take care of their stocking stuffers early.

19 comments:

  1. Niiice, and we just had partial hangings, how boring is that?!

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  2. I am a nurse, disapointing you speak like this. I was doing a search for a project for novice to expert level nursing and how to bring in new nurses...wow. I am a manager to a lot of nurses and you are not one I would want on my team...find another job, because the care is not here. Wow...you are making nurses look horrible.

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    1. here's how you bring in new nurses: tell them the truth!! i come upon these situations pretty much on the daily, and...funny...not once was it mentioned in nursing school that my patients would often be liars, drug seekers, and generally entitled, manipulative people. tell me, what kind of nursing do you do that you can't relate to this? you must have polite, kind, honest patients who just want ibuprofen and who pay for their care. maybe if some of us had those nice and shiny nursing jobs we'd be a little more warm and fuzzy. and maybe if you had to deal with this crap day in and day out you'd be a little less judgemental.

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    2. Sorry honey, your disappointment doesn't mean shit to ER nurses who see this crap daily. Go find hood nurse's post about the horribleness the ER sees and why we can't care about assholes and then get the fuck over yourself.

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    3. LOLz at the lecture from someone in management. Go ahead and get physically attacked by drug seeking patients who aren't getting their way multiple times in one shift and see where your compassion level is, girl.
      But really, haven't you heard that apathy is the opposite of love? If I didn't care, I wouldn't be pissed about being lied to and manipulated, I wouldn't be hurt when I got verbally abused, and I wouldn't have to work it out on my blog in my own profanity filled way. Actually, if I didn't care, I probably would have gone into management.
      Haha. But seriously. Go research yourself a fucking clue. If you're looking to help nurses transition into a higher level of experience, you should learn that a part of that is the death of your nursing school notions that nursing is sunshine and kittens all day every day, and learning that feeling frustrated and angry sometimes is BEING HUMAN. Nursing is hard enough without holier-than-thou types like yourself telling us that we're bad for getting angry when we get treated like crap.

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    4. Seriously? Disappointed? BaHaHa. You obviously haven't worked a 12 hour patient care shift in a while. I have no life left in me after these 12 hour holiday shifts.

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    5. I need some Dilaudid. I am in pain after reading the holier than thou nurse manager's post. Signed, this RN.

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    6. *pain caused from laughing too hard. Apparently I can't type because I was laughing so hard.

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    7. Holy moly. I mean, yeah, I'm not an RN. And I've been treated as a drug seeker by a bad nurse - because, sorry, there *are* bad nurses out there, just like there are bad cops, and IT people, and teachers, and everything else - when I was actually in severe pain, solely because I was (*gasp*) able to fall asleep for a few minutes here and there.

      But, geez, I have a hard time believing that this anonymous "nurse manager" is anything but a troll. Unless s/he's always worked on The Planet of People Who Never Get Addicted And Lie About it, it smells hokey to little old I-Know-Nothing Me.

      Seriously. I know addiction is a horrible thing, and I know that publicly funded treatment programs are hard to get into, and private ones absurdly expensive. I know that some of these drugs are as hard to quit as cigarettes. But that doesn't excuse the behaviour of some of these drug seekers. And I cannot believe there is any nurse, especially one who has worked in an ER/ED, who hasn't seen this kinda bad behaviour.

      If I can see right through this, how obvious is it?

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    8. I wish the Anonymous manager would come back to see these replies, because I'm genuinely curious about him/her. What kind of nursing do you do? What kind of experience do you have? When is the last time you worked a 12-hour patient care shift? Have you ever worked in an ER?

      Also, as a manager, I'm curious how you respond to nurses who are burning out and need to vent. It's totally normal to feel frustration, anger, futility, resentment, and a whole lot of other negative emotions as a nurse...it would suck to have a manager that tried to make you feel bad about that.

      This blog is therapeutic for Hood Nurse and for a lot of her fellow nurses that read it, including me. Because she has a place to vent about all the ridiculousness she has to deal at work and know she's not alone, she's able to make it to another shift and deal with it all over again. Until you've worked as a nurse in an ER, especially an inner city safety net ER, you just can't judge. You have no idea what it's like.

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    9. This anonymous troll is a nurse in the same way that I'm a Jedi Knight.

      Keep on blogging, Hood Nurse.

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  3. And they were so outraged, they couldnt be bothered to attach a name to their tripe. I would rather have one realist to work with than thirty ivory tower idealists. Phooey.

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  4. Laughing/ snorting out loud, because this is SO TRUE. But why, why does the holidays do this? That, we have not discovered with our scientific techniques.

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  5. I love you, hood nurse! I've been a nurse at an inpatient rehab for 5 years and you are awesome! You make me rofl.

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  6. I also work in an inner city ER. I love your writing, your humor and your caring. I've been a house supervisor, in leadership, but found my way back to bedside in the ER, because that's what we do. It's totally different than any other kind of nursing.
    I'm disappointed in the 'research nurse' who is so far from the ER she doesn't get you. Her loss.

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  7. I LOVE YOU. Seriously. I die of laughter reading these posts, but mostly because I know that you have this sense of humor to cope with all the shit you actually deal with. I'm almost done with nursing school, and I'm still not as naive as holier-than-thou nurse. I've maybe spent 12 hours in an ER, and I already caught onto some of these schemes. I wish more people in my class would read blogs like this so that they realize what nursing actually entails rather than saving lives on the daily and bringing in brand new healthy, smiling babies to parents who are absolutely ready and excited to have a child.

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  8. I am just starting nursing school in Jan so I really appreciate your full honesty. I'm a former teacher so I've dealt with those idealistic first year teachers and I'm glad I have a better idea of reality heading into nursing. Based on your blog, I think I don't want to go into trauma but I'm trying to be open minded and wait and experience it for myself.

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  9. The good news for prospective nursing students is that a nurses salary is on the rise right now, and the potential for advancement and higher earnings throughout a career is huge. For further information click here.

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  10. ENJOYED RECALLING SOME OF THE FINER MOMENTS AND TROLLS OF HOOD HOSPITAL 1. I REALLY MISS YOU AND YOUR BFF

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