The picture below is me on Monday night from the hours of 1900-2330.
I walked into work early, saw my assigment, and realized that one of my patients might be going home soon. I asked the day nurse if I needed to look this patient up or not. She said no, she needed to change the wound dressings and then she'd leave.
I get report on my first patient. All good. Then I wait for this nurse cause she has the rest of my patients to give me. I offer to help with the discharge, but she said she had it under control. Fast forward half an hour. It's 1945 (7:45pm) I'm still waiting and haven't gotten report. I go into the room and try to help and this patient is all kinds of crazy and rude and making life ridiculously difficult. She's pulling old hot dogs out of drawers and making us undo stuff so she can do it the right/ slow way. Finally, we get someone else to help this patient pack up so we can give report. It's now 2020 and I've done nothing.
2020. Walk into patient room #1. Patient is actively bleeding from the rectum. Sitting in a pool of blood. Call the doctors and clean him up. Doctors don't want to do anything so the patient is upset.
2035. Patient #2. We walk in and the patient immediately starts yelling at me cause I didn't give him a bath. I explain that he had gotten a bath earlier that day and he'll get one in the morning. He's confused and angry and calls me a few choice names.
2040. Patient #3. Covered in poop. I won't describe it cause it's close to dinner time. We clean him up.
2050. Patient #4 is the patient I got report on over an hour ago. He' fine.
2050-2100. Finally go in to do assessments. Patient #3 oxygen levels are in the 70s and 80s and aren't going up with more oxygen. We get him a mask to help out, sit him up, call respiratory therapy, get breathing treatments, etc.
2120. I usually have my assessments done by 2000. I'm already over an hour late and have an open bed that could be assigned to me at any moment. I get my glucose level on patient #3 and it's critical. He can't eat anything cause he chokes on food so I run to go get him dextrose (sugar water) to go through his IV. I can't get the IV to work. I fiddle with it for what seemed like forever and finally got the darn thing to work. I give him the meds.
2129. I go into the bathroom for 30 seconds to be away from everyone and take 4 or 5 deep breaths.
2130. The open bed is assigned. I call my charge nurse and say to her, "I'm drowning right now and I don't think I can take this admission." Luckily, another nurse had an open bed and she was all caught up. She was able to take this admission for me. If not, I would have had a small mental breakdown.
For the next 2-3 hours, I was running (more like speed walking) around like a toddler on caffeine trying desperately to catch up. Eventually I reached a point where everything calmed down and I was able to breathe.
Lessons of the day: Nursing is never boring. It's ok to admit that there's something you can't handle. Take 30 seconds to take some deep breaths. Find someone who will listen to you vent. Laugh about it later cause life goes on.
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