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Emergency Room Diaries #2: A Crazy Shift In The E.R....(By Kerry Weaver, R.N.) by Karen Lynn Vidra, The Texas Tornado
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Rated "PG" by the Author.
A nurse writes of her recent rcovery from a near-deadly spider bite and of situations she has encountered since coming back to her job as an emergency room nurse. After the bad day she had, she is seriously thinking of transferring to another department in the nursing field.
Being a nurse isn't all what it is cracked up to be. I mean, you want to provide the best of medical care; yet on the other hand, if you do something wrong, you can get into serious trouble, or worse, sued, and there is always the risk of your losing your job and getting fired.
This is Kerry Weaver. If my name doesn't ring a bell, I am the nurse who was bitten by a brown recluse spider about three weeks ago. I am about fully recovered now, but I still have some minor, leftover pain, and I am still on antibiotic therapy; and I still have to go to see Dr. Tadashi every week, so she can keep tabs on my wound until it heals. The spider bite really put a cramp into my work schedule: I was off for two weeks, and I just returned to work last week, on "light duty" until Dr. Tadashi releases me from her care.
I usually do the Emergency Room shift, but Louisiana Sandusky has been kind enough to work for me while I was off, recovering from my spider bite. Of course, I will have to pinch my pennies this time around because my check will be so small, but if it were not for Louisiana, I would have had to work anyway, and I was in no shape to work, not with all the pain I had from that stupid spider bite! I never knew such a tiny creature could make such a huge mess of my leg: my leg had a crater in it, and it hurt like hell, and looked worse. I felt awful, and for a while, the pain was so bad (plus having to have the stupid thing debrided; that was the WORST!) did NOT help matters any! It only caused more pain, more agony, for me, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up and DIE!
But now that I am finally back at work, I am doing my nursely duties, but am not doing the heavy duty lifting or extra running around, which is what I usually do when I am at work in the E.R. I am mostly taking vitals and getting patients' medical histories, and also pluggin' 'em up to IV's and other monitoring equipment, and I also have been taking blood gases and doing other tests. I am not doing the codes so much because it is hard on my body right now, and I am still recovering from the spider bite on my leg. If I do too much, I hurt, and I end up having to sit until my leg stops hurting so much, and I also have to have something for the pain, especially if I have had the area debrided. It is NOT fun, and I wouldn't recommend you being in my situation because being in my predicament flat out SUCKS!
We had a bad one come in the other day: a man in his 60's came into our E.R., and he was down. He had suffered a massive heart attack, and when he was brought into our E.R., he was without breath, without a pulse, and he was clinically dead. He had no measurable blood pressure, and his skin color was the color of blueberries. He really looked awful, and it took all of our wits and skills to try to revive the man; but to no avail. He was just too far gone when he was brought in, and we pronounced him dead about forty five minutes after he came in. No matter what we did, or what medications we used, we could not save the man, and it really put a downer on our moods. We also had a baby girl come in who had meningitis, and as we were checking on her, she went down, too, and we responded to our second code in a two hour period. She ended up dying too, and like the man, we couldn't get her back, no matter what we did.
We also had some victims of a drive by shooting come in to our E.R., and they were in pretty bad shape. It was a wild day in our E.R., and by the time we had sent the last drive by shooting victim off to surgery, we were ready to fall over, we were so tired. We did manage to save the drive by shooting victims, but our joy was tempered by the deaths of the heart attack victim and the baby with meningitis; and it ended up being a pretty rotten day for all of us. We ended up snapping at one another, and one of the younger student nurses got fired when she called Louisiana a "bitch", which did NOT sit well with her. (WRONG thing to do.) Of course, Louisiana blew up, and she fired the nurse's ass, and now we are short one nurse. Which means that someone will have to cover up the slack caused by the termination of this particular nurse.
When I got off 12 hours later, I was sore, and my leg was really bothering me. I thought my bite was becoming infected, but when I got it checked, it looked okay. I still felt bad, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. I was tired, and my mood was anything but pleasant when I finally clocked out. All I kept thinking about was of the two deaths that had occurred in our E.R., and I was also mad about Jenna acting so stupid and getting fired because of her pissing off the head nurse. I don't know what she was thinking when she crossed Louisiana like that, but she was not using her head, and she had an attitude problem. She didn't like Louisiana telling her what to do, and she didn't like the scut work that Louisiana had her doing, but that is part of the job, and Louisiana was only telling her what the job entailed; and Jenna got sick and tired of it. She told Louisiana what she thought of her, and the job, and Louisiana ended up firing her because she was tired of Jenna's attitude and her not pulling her weight at the hospital. Jenna was lazy, and we all had problems with her. She was always having us do her work, and all she cared about was going out with her friends, plus there were times when she was supposed to report to work, and she would never call or show up, or if she DID call in, she would say that she was sick, just so she could go out with her friends and spend the night dancing instead of working. It was obvious that Jenna did NOT like the E.R., and she did everything in her power to make her co-workers' lives a living hell, in particular, Louisiana's.
I know the E.R. can get crazy a lot of the times, but after the bad day I had the other day, I am seriously thinking of getting into another area of nursing. Maybe I can work with the babies or with the children. Anything has GOT to be better than the breakneck, frenetic pace of the Emergency Room!
~Written by Kerry Weaver, R.N., on Sunday, July 25, 2004, at 3:26 p.m., C.S.T.
I don't think Jenna was a good nurse anyways...If she was she would've been more responsible not to be in total control of her emotions..I think a nurse or doctor should always be on alert...and not lazy or plain stupid like Jenna!!
See I told you spiders was dangerous...hate those bloody "Goggos"
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Being a nurse isn't all what it is cracked up to be. I mean, you want to provide the best of medical care; yet on the other hand, if you do something wrong, you can get into serious trouble, or worse, sued, and there is always the risk of your losing your job and getting fired.
