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Ever have one of those work days that seemed to go on forever with no
end in sight? I saw a lot of them but the following stands out in my
mind more than some of the others. I don't think the nurses of today
could have done it. We did it with a limited staff and a floor full of
patients. This is how that evening shift went for 6 hours of the eight
that we worked and no overtime either. Working on the surgery floor one evening, we had a code blue on a new surgery patient. He was a young man in his 30's. It was also one of those evenings where the pace just got faster and faster. Lot of new surgeries with vital signs every 15 minutes, lots of pain shots and of course the code in full progress. The surgeon worked frantically on the patient. The code team kept running out of supplies in their bag with all the medications the doc was using in the code. We shocked the patient numerous times and brought him back only to have him arrest again and again. I remember the doc said go to surgery and get a surgical set up. He opend the tools and used a scapel and opend the patient's chest and did open heart massage for the longest time......no success. He finally had to call the code to a halt. God was not going to let us keep this man. His soul was in God's hands now. We cleaned up the patient, his room, and somehow kept the patient lights answered and every new surgery patient vitals taken. Oh that was a busy night. When things calmed down, we realized that we missed supper and breaks. It was after 10:00 pm, the cafeteria was closed and so were the snack bars. The next thing we knew, here came our nursing supervisor with about 5 sack of hamburgers, fries and drinks. She knew we all missed our meal time. She bought all the food herself and refused to take any money for it. She worked as hard as we did on the code and the other duties that night. I never met another more caring supervisor as she was. She was a blessing in disguise that evening shift. So Ms Organ where ever you are, God bless you and thanks for the burgers.  |
Lee
Duty Log 3
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