Sam said:
God, you guys are all so positive :much sarcastic eye rolling:
There are also nights when you go to sleep knowing that you were responsible for saving a life.
I think that makes it worthwhile.
Hardly ever does a nurse feel like or is made to feel like they had anything to do with saving a life.
Find a patient in lidocaine toxicity having seizures the doctors says "she is not lidocaine toxic" Goes to check onthe patient and comes out "I coldnt get a focal reaction out of her but I dont think its the lidocaine". He then writes orders to d/c lido.
Find patient in near respiratory arrest because of morphine and give narcan, doctor says "who in the hell gave this patient morphine?...Now the patient is going to be up all night in pain"
Find a patient with a capillary blood glucoce of 30 and give 1/2 amp of D50 and doctor says "I dont believe the sugare was that low..those machines are not very accurate at the lower levels...you should have never given the D50"
Find a patient on the verge of coding on the floor, you call up a respiratory therapist, hook up a crash cart and are already working on the patient when the do code....get the patient back and get a phone call from the doctor "how long did you wait to code this patient...she is showing very little brain activity".
Find a patient with his chest tube disconnected and the aline pumping blood in the floor while the monitor clerk is canceling the alarm the doctor says "who was watching this patient anyway".
Find a patient in V-tach and beg the cardiologist to see the patient and you get "this damm patient is stable...I think its SVT with a bundle branch block"
Resident tells you to "get the patient to the unit now" (who by the way has a tension pneumothorax and svt 180 because the previous nurse wasnt paying attention) and when you get to the unit the nurse says "who told you to roll the patient without calling report" and the resident says "I didnt tell them to do that".
I could give you about 1000 more examples but you get the idea.