chirp that..

I woke before the alarm this morning. Partly due to dreading the fact that I have to work today and partly because one of the smoke alarms is making that damn chirping sound. It seems that when the battery gets low the thing chirps every 15 seconds. The part that drives me fucking batty is that I cannot easily identify which detector is the guilty member.

I sit in bed and hear the fucking chirp ever 15 seconds, but when I go downstairs to the detector I suspect of being the one with the low battery - not a peep. I stood beside the damn thing for 15 minutes and not a sound. I come back upstairs and within seconds - chirp! I am minutes away from taking a bat and bashing every smoke detector in the house (there are 5).

The thing is that beeps, chirps and any type of alarm drives me freakin crazy! It is one of those things that gets under my skin and makes me nuts. I worked at one hospital that had IV pumps that would beep as you were changing fluids. The damn thing would beep faster and louder the longer it was not addresses. I swear I came close to throwing a few down the stairwell and had I stayed there for an additional assignment, a few of them would not have made it out.

I can understand the need for an alarm, but come on!! The alarm of the monitor for high/low BP reading can me silenced/acknowledged but continues to alarm until you change the parameters. It is not enough to simply acknowledge it!! Drives me crazy - so the option is to remove the module or make the parameters so outrageous that is does no good to monitor.

Once I had a PRN gig at a local LTACH and it was a horrible job!! This whack-a-doodle place had a respiratory therapist manager who had input in the staffing of nurses. I know - that is out there. Anyway, he thought it would be a good idea to have the call bell monitor reset so that nurses could not acknowledge the alarm. If you acknowledge the you have a few minutes of relief from the ringing until you finish what you are doing and turn off the bell at the bedside. But no! Dunder-fuck thought by acknowledging the alarm nurses were ignoring the patient - like the fat bastard had a clue! So, the bells kept ringing - nonstop! Forget taking phone orders or answering calls from families. Instead everyone avoided the nurses station and physicians complained about the damn noise.

I ended up leaving that messed up place. In part because of the less than qualified staff and because I was offended that a respiratory therapist with a sad little associate degree had any input to patient care outside his scope. I like order and I like when organizations position responsibility according to education and practice level...