basric | LJIDOLl week 10 PROMPT "ICARUS"

Okay, I confess making my icon was a lot easier than figuring out what to write. I have read all the entries so far and about a third put their own personal twists on the myth, some chilling, some very different slants...about a third went with the moral, the warning the myth carries and a third left me wondering what the hell does that have to do with Icarus, even abstractly I couldn’t see it. I was ready to give up and take a “BYE” when I thought knowing how evil and diabolical Gary is--next week will be even worse. I never was a big mythology buff, so I was torn between a trauma story--too gory (let’s admit trauma is about gory) and a regular floor. If you are not asleep by now...here it is. I hope you enjoy.

Every year around May and June we lose about half our nurses. Young nurses just won’t put up with the way families, patients and doctors sometimes treat them like slaves. I had a calling to nursing. The new nurses go into for the money or thinking they will snag a doctor.

I was working charge on a post operative floor. I had four new nurses one week off mentoring. They’d had two weeks of hospital Skills Fair and four weeks of mentoring. There were two agency nurses on the floor and three regulars.

New nurses ::SIGH:: some are over-eager but there is always one who knows EVERYTHING. I had one of these tonight. She had potential, but she wouldn’t listen. The book learning does not always correspond with real life.

To them all, "If you have a question or are not sure come and ask me. These peoples' lives are in your hands. Tracy rolled her eyes.
I closed my eyes and the mantra for the night was “Please don’t let them kill anyone tonight.”

Within thirty minutes all four new nurses had informed me that I gave them the hardest assignments on the floor.

“Do you have the two new amputees that bandage will have to be changed?”

“No.”

“Do you have the three patients with large open abdominal wounds to dress.”

“No.”

“Do you have the brittle diabetic with checks every hour.”

“No.”

“Shall I change your assignment to one of those?”

“No.”

Tracy was especially furious because her patient had to have an NG Tube inserted into his stomach from his nose. Even though I offered to help her she flounced off with "I can do it myself." Though I later learned she got another nurse to insert it.

Jenny came to me in tears, her patient had called her a bitch. I told he she was going to have to grow a hard shell and went to deal with him.

He called me a bitch when I walked in the door.

“Yes, I am the charge bitch, and Mr. G. the nurse is not your personal slave. She has four other patients. This floor has two hour checks. You tell her NOW what you need, all at once and unless you are dying do not call her again.

”He smirked then uncovered his naked self, he had a Foley catheter in his penis. He grabbed his penis in one hand the tube in the other and said "Watch this, I can push it in" PUSH PUSH PUSH, "and pull it out," OUT OUT OUT.

Oh good grief the fool thinks that's gonna turn me on "Stop that before you hurt yourself." Idiot

All night I put out fires. One nurse didn’t have the right meds and burst into tears. I taught her to do a simple pharmacy call and to volunteer to run down and get it. Problem solved.

A dementia patient kept ripping her bandage off so we reviewed the ridiculous long paperwork necessary by JOINT COMMISSION, the hospital policing unit, to use restraints on her and called a resident to sign it.

Yet another came and said she couldn’t get the meds down a patient's G-Tube (one directly into the stomach). After examining the tube I asked her, “Did you crush them first?”

“Was I suppose to?” (I wanted to bang my head against the wall) I showed her how to clear the line with hemostats and boiling water.

“Make sure the tube is cool and you can't feel the pills anymore before you release it and push it into his stomach.”

Next. Keep in mind that potassium runs the muscles. The heart is a muscle. Potassium or K+ is caustic and burns like hell in the vein so either it goes very slowly or in a line directly into the heart. (This is one of the reasons that K+ is now prepared in bags in the pharmacy and taken off the floors. The next nurse came to me and said she tried to push the K+ but each time the patient screamed. (Mental picture of me banging head on desk) I told her to put it in a liter bag and run it slow. Also scared her to death when I told her if the patient had had a central line and she had pushed it the patient would have died.

Then the kicker was when one came and told me her patient had TB.

“How do you know, did the sputum tests come back positive three times.”

“No, he is getting TB shots." She had taken a TB skin test and injected it. (How did I keep from strangling her; I know not)

At least they had enough sense to come and ask, I give them that mistake once. I don't expect to see them commit it again.

All of this did not include my own work with admissions, the charge reports and chart checks.

Strangely enough, nothing from Tracy all night. Usually, I do not follow behind R.N.s I am suppose to give them room to spread their wings for they know when to ask for help. But Tracy's attitude bothered me and once I had a spare moment I checked her patients. I found Tracy had three patients complaining of severe pain, several times to her in fact, with no response. I medicated them as I couldn't find her. I checked a dressing on an unconscious patient and found she had just removed the top tape and initialed and dated it. (And you wonder how you or your loved ones get infections in hospitals)

But the worst mistake had me panicking and I don't panic...she needed to hang an antibiotic on a patient and they did not have an IV running. (Though I found a saline lock in her hand for that purpose) The patient did have an epidural running into her back for pain relief.

She had taken down the epidural, which only an anesthesiologist was allowed to do at the time, and hung the antibiotic. Half the dose had gone into the patient’s spinal cord before I found and clamped it.

I woke the Attending. I woke the Manager of the floor. When I confronted her in the break room sitting on her ass she shrugged. SHRUGGED.

Someone WAS going to die tonight and I was going to be the one to murder her.

The patient suffered severe brain damage, again Vanderbilt paid out of their slush fund, I didn’t have anything to do with that. It was cut and dried.

Vanderbilt went to locked epidural machines.

The nurse was fired and remanded to the TENNESSEE NURSING BOARD which took her license and fined her $5,000. The family also sued her privately but I don’t know how that came out, she was single with nothing, so I‘m sure it forced her into bankruptcy.

I know that night she ruined her life with her arrogance and pretentious behavior along with the life of a young woman and her family. This last part made so many changes in procedures that it has become something of an Urban Legend around all the hospitals in Nashville and surrounding counties.