I was at work yesterday. It was crazy. This week was my first week in the ED. The first 2 days were fine. Yesterday was rough. Keep in mind that this is a Level 2 Trauma center in a downtown metro area. Memphis was just declared one of the unhealthist cities in America. This is based on several factors. With a list of 31 final criteria, including air quality, motor vehicle deaths, sexual health, access to medical care, the number of health clubs, even days of sunshine per year
Memphis, Tennessee ranked as the unhealthiest city. And I work a Level 2 trauma center in this town. JOB SECURITY!
Some of the idiots who walk in the ER really take the cake. And I’m told Larry was back yesterday. Larry is our troublemaker homeless person. I thiink every ER has at least one. One of the techs carries around candy in his pocket. He’ll give it to Larry if he’ll go away. Apparently Larry really sick is no problem to deal with. Larry just hungry is a pain in the ass.
The 3 days I’ve been in the ER, I’ve only had to buy lunch once. And that was on the day they were implementing new cash registers in the cafeteria. One day we were taking care of the father of someone who owns a local pizza joint. She bought the nurses pizza as a thank you. Yesterday the drug rep bought us sandwiches. That’s when it got rougher. We had to swallow our food whole. We had a full swing recesitation coming in via ambulance. We got her stablized. She was decordicate positioning. Which is Not a Good Thing®. We had another lady come in. Postop from having a brain stem tumor removed. She was confused with nausea & vomiting. Also Not a Good Thing®. Then GI lab calls a code. So the tech, nurse and I grab a defibrillator and a med box and go tearing through the hospital to the GI lab. We get there and there are too many people in the way. But they’re yelling that they need a new stylette. They dropped the other one on the floor. (The stylette is what you use to intubate to give some rigidity to the intubation tube.) So I go running to the closest nursing unit which happens to be Same Day Surgery on 1 East. And the nurse and I start tearing through thier intubation cart (I could tell they’d never used it) to find the stylette. Then I go running back to the GI lab with the stylette. I pass it off and we left.
We transfer lady #1 to the ICU. I get back and go to put up the monitor and they’re running another freaking code in the room. It hadn’t even got cleaned. They were pulling drugs out of the box that was used in the first code. That guy didn’t make it. Apparently he had a massive MI and was already lost when the paramedics arrived.
We got in another guy with a methadone overdose. A little Narcan and he woke up just fine.
We had 3 suicidal client on the subacute hall. I think that’s where all our techs were. Suicide attempts have to have a constant sitter with them in the ER area.
I got a phone call. Apparently my name was pulled out of the associate feedback survey and I won $20 gift certificate to the movies.