Monday, April 15, 2013

Tag

No one can do this alone.  At any given point, one of us is going to have more on our plate than we can handle, patient-wise.  My attitude tends to be that I should help whenever I can, because just maybe that favor will be returned when I really need it later.  Plus, the time passes a lot faster when you're working hard.  A couple of people out there tend to abuse this mentality, though.
 I distinctly remember the first time it happened to me as a new nurse. I had just been released from my internship at Hood Hospital.  Super awesome preceptor number #2 had instilled in me the importance of teamwork from the first day she worked with me, so when I noticed my partner got an ambulance,  I hopped up to help him start it.  He hopped up, got a cup of coffee, and sat back down at the nurses' station.  At that point, I was already in his room getting report from EMS.  I was utterly shocked and appalled by the whole situation and recounted it to ER BFF in the break room later that night.  She nodded knowingly. "Yup.  Some people like to play that tag you're it game.  Oh! You're in the room?  You're it! Your ambulance now! Nope.  I don't play that shit.  I don't help those people unless they're drowning." And after that day, I became a slightly wiser nurse and learned to let the lazy people screw themselves.  
I've pretty already much figured out who is and isn't safe to help out at the new place.  If you're on your iPhone dicking around on Facebook at any point during the shift unless the place is just dead, you're pretty much on your own.  However, I picked up a mid shift the other day to bail out a friend, and they apparently decided to pair the night shift girl with the tag champion.  I've taken report from this guy enough times to know that he's lazy, but I found out that day that he is a special brand of ballsy lazy.  Most run-of-the-mill lazy people will at least make themselves scarce and hide out in the break room or the bathroom by CT or some shit, but ballsy lazy people will straight up stare at you with their feet on the desk and watch you do single-rescuer CPR.
Yeah, well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but only a little bit.  I'm charting when I see an ambulance roll into his room- this patient is obviously FUBAR.  Like, look of impending doom on his face, diaphoretic, pale, no IV, oh, and covered in some really c-diff-y smelling poo just for good measure.  At this point it's about an hour from shift change. I immediately go to work looking for IV access while EMS gives me a report I'm taking down in my head.  I grab a frightened EMT student walking by to start vitals and an EKG.  Monitor shows an OMG WTF looking rhythm, alarms are dinging all over the place, this dude has crap for veins, and demanding family member shows up making demands about us getting the patient water and cleaning up the poo immediately, as if it hasn't been there since yesterday. Tag king walks back and forth several times throughout this fun process, watching the madness unfold. He looks at the monitor, looks down to avoid eye contact with me, and keeps going.  In any other case, I would probably walk out and tell him off, but I was legitimately worried that this patient was going to die.  Luckily for everyone, one of the medics walked by, saw the chaos, grabbed a doctor and we all collectively got the dude somewhat stabilized.
I walk out of the room sweating to find tag king giving report and texting.  I immediately walk back into the room, grab two packs of wipes, drop them on the desk in front of him, and say, "C'mon tag king! I've got your ambulance started, but I'm gonna need some help cleaning him up!"  Homeboy sure did end up staying about 20 minutes after his shift to clean up the c-diff assplosion, too.  I helpfully turned the patient and made sure he didn't miss any spots.  Tag, bitch.

18 comments:

  1. Wow....you know, we do have moderately lazy coworkers my ICU, but they are pretty scare and not at ALL as horrible as the one you described above. I guess because we have less of a reliance on team dynamics (still certainly necessary to survive, but we are more isolated and less able to offer help/willing to accept it....oh the ICU mentality) this kind of idiot wouldn't have anyone awesome like you to pick up the slack and would have lawsuits galore filed....Gah, you have my respect/condolences, I would explode at such a colleague and likely throw dirty wipes at him instead of clean ones.

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  2. Hah nice move! Lazy coworkers suck. Because like you said, as much as you want to just let them get what's coming to them, it's not just them! It's an ambulance patient who's about to die. So they continue being lazy.

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  3. Go HOOD NURSE! You got your Mojo back! I use to do things when they are trying to avoid me, like calling their name out for all to hear and announcing to everyone that I was helping them out. They can't really hide in that situation.

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  4. Those lazy people callouts are the little nuggets of joy that I live for on shitty nights at work.

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  5. I am an ER Tech and actually had the nurse from our fast track call to the main ER to get me to take a patient to the bathroom. The bathroom was maybe 3-4 feet to the right of the patient and the nurse was sitting 3 feet to the left of the patient.

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  6. Tag, bitch! Annnddd. . .Hood Nurse is BACK! Yay! You are my badass hero. Glad you're feeling better!

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  7. Double High Fives for your Hoody Badness!

    When local talent Tag King (or Queen) plays stupid, I alternate between calling a Code Critical (if the patient is), or just asking the dept. secretary to ovehead page the charge nurse and the nurse responsible for Room XX to report to Room XX. Bonus points if they're standing two feet in front of me acting clueless.
    Whoever gets there first gets the EMS report, and after that I just let gravity go to work, 'cause we know which way the poo rolls.
    Ducking a Train Wreck of a med run is a flogging offense with douchebag clusters, and if you don't hammer the little butt nuggets, they just get worse.

    Applying the letters TNS after RN on your ID badge for "Takes No Shit" is optional, but recommended. You have exceeded the award criteria.

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  8. awesome....tag bitch.....I was reading this in class and it was all I could do to not bust out laughing in the middle of class (yeah, OK, I go online when class gets boring...it's Development what do you expect?) if you're on Facebook, you need to check out this group site...you'd love it!!

    You are providing me with quite an education regarding nursing....I start my first clinical in a month!!

    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Intelligent-classy-well-educated-women-who-say-Fck-a-lot/191907457493339

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  9. Wow.....that's hilarious! I really can't stand it when people can't even take care of their own patients....it's the worst!The only thing you can do it lead by example and hope and pray that you don't end up in the same pod with those people.

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  10. When I came to my current hospital from one that was so unsafe and busy, I used to be surprised and mildly insulted when I was assigned to the trauma room and we would get a code and people would come in to help me. I was like, "What, y'all think I can't run this mess on my own?" But then I realized it was nice to have help. Now, though, I HATE it when I'm in there, we get some super sick, found down in the floor in a pile of shit, bad cardiac rhythm, septic full code fat 80-year-old and three nurses run in to do all the fun stuff (starting lines, pushing meds, etc etc) and then leave me alone just as the patient's stabilized and it's time to start scraping fossilized poo off the patient from shoulders to knees.

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  11. I have to say I love you! That was a great response to the chaos thrown upon you by someone else's laziness.
    Cindy

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  12. I think your "tag-ee" must moonlight were I work! LOL- love yuour blog!!

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  13. Girl, where did you go? Haven't heard from you in a couple of weeks on the blog...

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    1. I'm slacking. Sometimes I just feel like I've run out of ways to describe the stupidity.

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  14. That was a great move by you. Keep calling on the lazyboy to get to work. He's stop messing with you. I hope your student picked up some of that mojo from you.

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  15. I so know the feeling of being nurse tagged!!
    love your sense of humour!

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  16. Yeah, this is why I left nursing to be an educator. At the last hospital I worked at, the weekend only people worked 12 hours and the regular people worked 8. I would get paired with a nurse who was completing her 12 hour day shift, so we shared the first four hours of my evening shift. Well, she would socialize during the day and chart her day shift stuff during those four hours, leaving me to take care of 10 or so patients, including my first med pass. I caught on pretty quickly and one day, when she was giving report, I said to her that she didn't need to give me report on the other five patients because she was keeping them for the first four hours. Two hours in, the lights above her patients' rooms were lit up like Christmas trees and she asked me to answer them. I told her "Nope" and walked away. That was the last time she ever worked with me. I wonder why.

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