cluster..

I was called into work yesterday after being down staffed. It was one of those days where they needed a nurse immediately, because they had a "situation". So, I needed some hours and I sad yes and got my tail to work.

I walked into a shit storm that took the entire day to correct. One patient was to be discharged once he was seen by the diabetic educator. However, the educator discovered the patient could not afford any of his medications. So that left little ole me to track down case managers and social workers to help resolve the situation.

I kept thinking that all this should have been discovered much earlier and isn't that the responsibility of the case manager to initiate discharge planning from the get go. Why are we dealing with the issue right as discharge? And more importantly, why am I caught in the middle?

The whole process took over 6 hours and was a major cluster to deal with and he was my easy patient. The other one was being whisked to surgery as I walked in the door. The nurse gave a quick frantic report and she was out the door. She had some family drama going on and her head was not in the game.

Minutes after the one patient left for the OR I get this call from some bitch of a nurse in the OR holding. "Why did this patient come without a nurse?" I was a little thrown - "what there are not any nurses in the holding area?" Yea, poking fun at mean bitchy nurses never ends well. She went on to complain that the patient was sent on cardizem without a monitor or a nurse. I explained that I literally walked in the door and peeked at the patient while the other nurse was getting her out the door.

Later the manager of the unit comes to me with the list of complaints that included the patient was naked (covered with sheets/blankets only), the sheets were blood soaked, and the patient was on a cardizem drip. I explained to the manager that it was the other nurse who stated the monitor was not needed that the cardizem was to prevent vasospasms and not cardiac related, the patient had been hot and requested not to have a gown and her fashiotomy was the reason for the bleeding - DUH!!

When the patient came back she told me stories of the angry nurses back there. She made me laugh when she said, "those hens need to get laid and maybe they would stop being bitches." She was a great patient and she had gone through three procedures within three days and could still crack jokes and roll with the punches.