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Saturday, August 31, 2013

The worse part of having 30 patients on treatments

The worse part of having 30 patients on breathingi treatments, with 28 who don't need them, is that I don't care about conversing with my patients the way I usually do.  My sole MO is to dole out nebs (yes, to be a neb jockey, or the nurses bitch).

The patient wants to start a conversation with me, and I feel guilty, but I'm so burned I can't even crack a smile.  My wife says I should be happy to do this, because I get paid to dole out stuff that's not needed.  But even that doesn't do it for me any more.  I just feel so pointless when I'm working like this.

Every room I go to, every doctor I talk to, every nurse I talk to, I keep coming up with ideas for my blog.  A doctor says, "I want to change that QID treatment to Q4 around the clock."  Why?  I just got done doing a treatment on that patient, and he was neither short of breath nor wheezy nor dim.  WT?.

A nurse comes to me and says, "I need you to give a treatment to the lady in room 33245234."

"Why?"

"Because she's wheezing."

"Is she short of breath?"

"No, but she sounds bad."

"She always sounds bad," I say.

If I walk away now the nurse thinks I'm lazy.  I once got written up because I didn't do what the nurse wanted.  So I go in the room and find a patient sleeping in no distress with an audible wheeze.  I say to the nurse, "If it's audible, it's not bronchospasm.  It's a cardiac wheeze.  It's in her throat."

But this is the 3,343,343,342,563,645,754 time I've explained this to this nurse, so I know this information is going to bounce off her gray matter like a rubber ball on cement.  So I do the treatment.  Yes, I'm this nurses bitch.

(Trust me, most nurses aren't this way.  Although when you're burned out is always (generalization) seems that such annoying nurses come out of the woodwork).

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