Monday, January 3, 2011

Oh right. Patients!

Just getting ready to crawl into bed after a long and harried day with the ALS crew. Oh and what a day it was. The glory of emergencies!

I mean, real ones...not the 'I saw an old guy going slowly down the street with his walker so I dialed 999' [true story that happened on my last shift].

I even managed to make myself useful and do a good thing. After a day of trailing with a kit bag it was nice to feel useful instead of useless for a moment. But that is a story for a day when I don't have to wake up again in 6 hours.

A nice reminder that I am learning applicable things! Information that is making my differentials more astute, my understanding deeper, and my realization that 'holy crap I don't actually know anything' crystal clear. It's always good to be reminded of the light at the end of the tunnel and what this is all truly about--patients! Not spotters, or papers, or OCASE's.

It is also good to realise that wow, I'd never want to work as a nurse in that hell hole of an emergency department. I thought the situation was dire in some of my previous Canadian haunts but, well, it was the Hilton in those places compared to what I saw today.

Sleep time.

4 comments:

E. Greene said...

So glad there was some action!

ertwro said...

If only there were a method we could use to sleep while we are with our patients, efficiently help them and not screw up, everything would be awesome. mmm...
mmm...
mmmmmmmmm...
Got it!
Dolphins WinterVacation School here I go!

Christopher said...

Glad you didn't have a boring ALS shift. But if I'm working somewhere...everybody is working.

ERP said...

'I saw an old guy going slowly down the street with his walker so I dialed 999'
Holy Crap.