I was in the middle of a series of breathing treatments in the ER on one of our regular COPD patients when I over heard the following over the din of the ER rush:
"I suppose I better page Rick again," it was the unit secretary, "he's notorious for not getting his pages."
"Um, he's already doing the treatment," a nurse said in defense of me. "In fact, he happens to be standing right there."
I turned around, stared viciously at that cranky unit secretary and said, "You know what, I wouldn't take so much time getting down here if you guys didn't call me for so much crap. I'd say 80% of the stuff you call me for is B.S!"
Okay, so that's what I wanted to say. What I really did was go about my business, smile, and pretend I didn't hear that exchange. And the rest of the night I smiled, was my normal cordial, phlegmatic, equanimitous self, and went about my business.
I'm telling you guys, when you work in a busy hospital around an amalgamate of people with an amalgamate of personalities, you learn to take such things with a grain of salt -- especially when you work nights.
2 comments:
...but it still annoys the hell out of you!!
I was sitting on a ward when a new PCA made a comment about "I'd call respiratory for a breathing tx but who knows how long it would take them to get up here." I whipped around and said "Really? Well that's because in my dept we're each carring the load of 2 1/2 people. Where is this person?" I went and checked it out and the lady didn't even ask for a breathing treatment, she asked for saline nasal spray because her nose was dry. I reported that to the charge nurse. Screw it. I'm tired of people who are nobody to me acting like they can order us around and we're just slackers.
You were much nicer!!!!!!
Actually, I should have said PCA's are nobody because, to be hoenst, when I want to know about a pt I usally go to them first becuase they have more hands-on time with pts. But it just annoyed me for her to be so condescending as if my dept exists to be her lackeys especially when she didn't even get the pt's request right.
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