This is where yours truly spends many of her recent days: WORK. Works makes the world go round and round and…okay that’s bullshit but I had to try to pretend this isn’t too bad.

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Working all weekend. Once again. I do love my job though. It comes with lots of benefits, esp. taking care of appreciative patients. Teach left this image in a comment here and I just had to post it up top.

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What to wear to work? With so many choices in scrubs these days, I get asked ALL the time why on Earth I chose to wear plain old fashioned, simple WHITES?

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I don’t do fast food very often. I guess, when I’m pretty short on time is when I’d be seen at these places. As I drove into my town this evening, from work (Job a) I spotted the Wendy’s and decided to get me a burger, some fries and a soda.

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When I’m not working I’m here–

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My work schedule makes me insane. It really does.

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mmMMmm….slow cooked today at work, over a grille. The weathur’s been rough and wild so this was just what the doctor ordered. YUMS!

Work SUCKS when the weather is bad.

Why?

Because so many use the weather as an excuse for not showing up or for being HOURS AND HOURS late. Take today for example…the first real storm of the season and we had 7 call outs, and 2 who were VERY LATE.

Um…so what does this all mean? Your hostess here was the ONLY ONE who reported for duty this morning. On time, with a smile.
This hasn’t happened for a few years- EVERYONE CALLING out is quite rare. It always seems to happen when I am scheduled though and it PISSES ME OFF to no end. The roads weren’t THAT bad. I didn’t need four wheel drive. Yes, it was snowing. Yeah, the roads had SNOW on them. So what??? You at least make an effort to TRY to get into work.

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An post over at the WSJ Health Blog caught my eye:

Nurses are beaten and abused, pinched and punched by deranged and demented patients.

The rough treatment of nurses by some of the people they care for isn’t an issue that gets much attention, but it should, Illinois doc Ben Brewer writes this his WSJ.com column. “Nurses get assaulted all the time at work,” he writes. “They get assaulted in small and large ways at every hospital and nursing home in the country.”

The subject comes up occasionally in the medical literature (see this study, for example), but for the most part everybody assumes it happens and there’s not much to do about it. Nurses are the infantry of the health-care system.

Brewer rolls out one example after another. The young nurse with the long scar on her forearm, where the surgeon went in to fix tendon damage after a patient violently twisted her hand and bent back her fingers. The ICU nurse with a deformed finger and nerve damage from a patient’s bite. The nurse who got punched in the ear.

He notes that patients are restrained less often than they used to be, but he suggests that more frequent use of restraints probably wouldn’t do any good. “Usually it’s the one you don’t see coming that gets you,” he writes.

Yea? Let’s talk about this rough treatment:

Nurses and aides are:
Hit
Punched
Kicked
Bitten
Pinched
Held semi captive by hair pulling
Picked up and thrown
Targets of objects being hauled across rooms- everything from a simple hair brush to entire hospital beds.

…and otherwise roughened up and abused by our patients.

On a daily basis.

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I’m on a break at work; it’s been a rough couple days here. I’m bitchy and moody and well, let’s just say-I’m not very personable right now. Everyone is staying away and that is a good thing.

We worked short yesterday. When I say “WE”- I mean me and the nurse. And no one else. From 2 pm on. It was Labor Day after all; a nice sunny warm day and you know- I guess they all just felt they deserved THE day off and the hell with work. The hell with the patients and their needs and wants. And who cares about the staff who have a little bit of moral and ethical responsibility- the little inner voices that tell us– work calls. Go in. Do your job. Do it well.

There were supposed to be 7 of us working, which is challenging in itself…BUT TWO?????? Was totally unsafe and it just can’t happen again. We have 20 high acuity, medically fragile patients. Many have heart conditions. Many have seizure conditions. 10 require ventilator support for breathing; they all have trachs which require constant care. I can say without much doubt it was one of the very worst days I have ever had at work. I called the bosses. Most of them were not home…but, of all the big whigs and nurses and aides who I called, I managed to get a message to one of the doctors. Who shows up at 5:30pm to HELP ME GET MY SHIT DONE. A doctor. MD. Took his Labor Day evening and spent it at work, helping me. Bet not too many folks can say they have seen this sort of thing occur.

He got a good first hand look at how hard this work is- made even more difficult by the endless round of tasks that have to be performed. Nevermind spending quality time with your patients. Just keeping them safe- comfortable, medicated, suctioned, fed, range-of-motioned, bathed, toileted, repositioned (every hour or so)…the constant monitoring of machines and pumps; the checking of valves and lines and tubes and collection bags…the Doc was good natured about it all and he was a BIG help. He called a couple of his friends up to work- they cleaned the kitchen and dining areas and took out the trash (one set of tasks that are usually done by nursing staff)…And they were a set of eyes on those patients who are able to be out of their beds.

Kim and Channy showed up a little while ago…they brought me some Dunkies coffee and Taz- who is staying at work with me tonight. He’s in the back room with me right now…and when I get back out to the unit he hangs out in the living room area with the patients who are up and about. They love him as he is so entertaining. I have permission to let him stay here with me; he had to pass several state physicals as well as specific work rules before he was allowed to roam the premises. He cannot enter any of the actual medical units though. But it’s great to have him here- he makes me smile with his endless licks and happiness.

There are enough of US here today and into tonight. We’re hoping to get in a break later where we can go out to the front field and play a game of touch football. We do that to blow off some steam. The long day is more than half over and it’s much better than yesterday!