I didn't have the usual 4th of July weekend. My celebration of independence was spent at my second home--the ER. I was just made a charge nurse (TL) in the last few weeks. Because we are so short staffed my orientation shifts are my regular ones with a backup TL there for questions. I got report, was handed the phone, and dove into the chaos. The best description of this job is to direct the chaos. I assign patients to rooms, answer ambulance calls, take care of complaints, be a back up nurse to my staff, take care of patients, and yeah a lot more.
The night wasn't too bad until I got a call from down south. They called to tell me they had a trauma coming up and would need to land in an hour. This group is not allowed to land on the Lifeflight pad because last time they blew the door off the helicopter. Reminded me of the time an ambulance service backed into the helicopter and dinged one of the wings. Well in order to pull that off we would need to clear out the field across the street from the hospital. People had filled the field to watch the Stadium of Fire Fireworks. Yeah that would have been fun. Luckily because of the storm and other reasons they sent the guy by ambulance. Well it all went down hill from there. During the entire day we saw 160 patients. To give you an idea we saw 70 of them between 5pm and midnight. One thing I was reminded of was how amazing my coworkers are. Despite the fact that we were understaffed and overworked they dug in until 0500 came around.
I don't know what I signed up for but this will be a good learning experience for me. I kept my head, had some fun, and crashed hard when I came home that night. We all ate our Hawaiian Haystacks though. One of my favorite meals and so delicous! I did manage to sneak out and watch the fireworks for 20 seconds. Happy 4th of July!
The night wasn't too bad until I got a call from down south. They called to tell me they had a trauma coming up and would need to land in an hour. This group is not allowed to land on the Lifeflight pad because last time they blew the door off the helicopter. Reminded me of the time an ambulance service backed into the helicopter and dinged one of the wings. Well in order to pull that off we would need to clear out the field across the street from the hospital. People had filled the field to watch the Stadium of Fire Fireworks. Yeah that would have been fun. Luckily because of the storm and other reasons they sent the guy by ambulance. Well it all went down hill from there. During the entire day we saw 160 patients. To give you an idea we saw 70 of them between 5pm and midnight. One thing I was reminded of was how amazing my coworkers are. Despite the fact that we were understaffed and overworked they dug in until 0500 came around.
No comments:
Post a Comment