The cath lab is not on my good side. Friday night I was the victim of the cath lab dump. Holding sends me one with a sheath and everything that is a new admission. That creates a lot of work for me. I have to check activated clotting times until it is low enough to pull the sheath. Then I have to pull the sheath and hold pressure. You have to occlude the femoral artery for 3-5 minutes. Then you have to release some of the pressure to get back a pedal pulse but continuing to hold pressure for 20 minutes. The only good thing was I got to pull to a FemStop to hold pressure. Which meant I didn’t wear myself out holding manual pressure. All this on top of new admission history and assessment.
My second headache was one that the cath lab came to get at 7:15 pm. They called me report from the procedure room, they didn’t even take her to holding. I got her back an hour after I got the sheath patient. She was angiosealed (a kinda glue in the artery when they pull the sheath). I was bouncing back and forth between these two for 2 hours. Then angiosealed lady woke up and wouldn’t lay still and started oozing. So I held pressure and applied a sandbag.
So while I was pulling the sheath, my walkie-talkie patient has a gush of fluid from her surgical wound that another nurse has to clean up.
After the sheath was pulled, angiosealed lady starts oozing again, so I hold pressure longer. I manage to get started charting when I another patient tries to get out of bed without assistance and falls.
All in all a horrible night.