Last night was a chaotic night shift. It was my test of patience, endurance and flexibility.
The night started really busy. There was a plan to do a major round of the whole unit, but then it did not happen because we could not manage to do that.
I was initially given a patient on Patient-controlled Analgesia (PCA) machine. But one of my colleagues objected on me having the patient because I was still new and have not done the competency test required. She was right and I agree with her. A few shifts ago, I received a patient from the operating room already on PCA, and nobody cared if I it was alright for me to take care of the patient. I was able to manage the patient though, because PCA is not new to me. I have handled PCA patients in my previous hospitals. But the policies and procedures just differ a bit from hospital to hospital so I really have to be knowledgeable on how they do it here in this hospital.
Well, at least somebody cared that evening, and took that patient from me. I got an exchange for a new patient, who sounded toxic in the endorsement, but I realized later he was not that bad after all.
My colleague who took the PCA patient started to become busy with that patient because there was something wrong in the orders and that some policies were violated. She needed to make phone calls, attend to the anesthesia doctor, etc etc. Her other patients kept calling, and so out of courtesy, I attended to them. One case was a major overhaul, after the patient passed bowel motion on the bed, and messed up himself and the whole bed. I had to clean him up, and change his gowns, diapers and linens. I stayed there almost half an hour.
After that patient, I saw one of my patient’s door lights on, meaning, he also needed a nurse to attend to him. I was on my way there when I was interrupted by one of the sitters from another room. He told me he needed a nurse urgently. When I got into the room, I saw the patient on the bed messed up with lots of blood. By assessment, I found out he was bleeding from the rectum. He was like swimming in his own pool of blood on his bed.
I called for help, and the nurse who’s in charge with the patient came in. To cut the story short, we got busy with that patient who was later pushed to ICU around 11pm.
Only then I was able to attend to my own patients. My patient who called earlier was, of course, disappointed that I have to come in late for him. He also needs to open his bowels, and he can only do that on a bed pan because he is on complete bed rest. I apologized for my delay and explained the reason. But of course, whatever the reason may be, I still placed him in a very uncomfortable situation.
After I attended to his needs, I started checking my other patients. I had six that night. All of them had the same lines “Wen Inta?”(Where were you?). I had to explain to each of them why I had to see them late. I was in a very uncomfortable position. I knew it was not right to see them late but what can I do? I had to help a co-nurse who had a critical patient.
My medications were running late, and some other things were not yet done. I tried to finish all of them slowly but surely.
I had to mention that while we were running back and forth because of the bleeding patient earlier, there was this one patient of mine who kept irritating me by coming many times to the station just to ask for a tv remote control. I had to explain to him several times that I was still attending to a critical patient, and that he needs to wait.
If the remote was just as easy as picking it up and handing it to him, it could have been alright. But I will need to search all empty rooms to do that, and I did not have time for that. I asked help from our charge nurse, but also told me that she could not find one. The patient, who is up and about, and ambulatory, insisted that he wanted the remote NOW. Imagine! There was a dying patient, and here he was insisting that I look for a tv remote control stat.
I need to keep my temper, otherwise, I might end saying things I might regret later on. In the end, after things have settled, I found a remote for my patient, I have given my medications and my patients started sleeping. I had my dinner break around 230am.
The rest of the night went smoothly, and the 6 o’clock madness ( I call the 6 o’clocks here as “6 o’clock madness” because it does not matter whether it’s am or pm, there is always a lot of work to be done before the shift ends at 7), was manageable.
Wow, I am four days off starting today! Now that’s what you call vacation after some very heavy shifts. That would be enough to recharge my super drained energy.
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