The day

There is an obituary on the bulletin board in the galley.  For a man who spent over half of the last several years of his life in our hospital.  He was my first rapid response, my first blood sugar of 17.  I took care of him many a time, and even though he was grouchy and noncompliant and tended to make things harder than they needed to be, even though he was a 57yo man living with his mother, I found myself saddened by his death in a way I wasn’t expecting.  And saddened that he died at a different hospital.  Is that weird? After spending so much time with us, he went somewhere else to die.  And as much as I would gripe about getting him again if he were my patient tonight, it is sad. 

Rest in peace, Mr. N.

It has been a hard month at my work, for a million reasons that I will not get into.  Moral is down, and there is this negative energy flowing.

It has been hard to go to work.  Hard to get the motivation.  There is the feeling that as hard as we try, it is never good enough.

A patient of my had a seizure this morning.  Completely unresponsive… three of us did sternal rubs before she finally came out of it… slowly.  Scared me a little bit, I thought we would have to rapid response her.  But she was okay.  Then, as I sat there waiting fro the dr to call me back, my admit showed up.  At 530.  Crazy times… crashing patients and new patients and I was stressed.  And you know what?  I made it out of the hospital at 720.  And that happened for one reason only.

I work with an amazing group of nurses.  Nurses who checked in my admit.   Who did the ekg on my seizure lady and who called monitor techs and who put up my charts and walked my pt to the bathroom.  Who asked what needed to be done and then did it.  Who did some things before I even asked.  We are a  team, which makes my job doable.  I have worked on other floors that have less of the team like atmosphere, and I don’t know how they do it. 

Today I was reminded why I like my job.  Why I am not sure I want to leave it.  Why I will never regret where I chose to get my first few years of experience in this crazy career of mine.

It was a reminder I needed.