Dear Crazy F*cking Family Members….

Dear Crazy F*cking Family Members,

Thank you so much for your inspirational words yesterday afternoon.  And the fact that you picked 5:30pm, and an hour and half before my shift ended, also known as crunch time, to flip out about things I had no conrol over was especially appreciated.  How did you know that questioning my profesional judgement and character would be the perfect recipe to win me over.  Of course everyone knows insulting the nurse is the best way to get more care and attention for your loved one, and it is definitly what pushes me from just doing my job and going the extra mile to make a difference in all of your lives.  I am also thankful that you chose the time when I am caring for a dying man and his greiving wife, preparing a very scared patient for a CT scan to see if she has yet another abscess in her abdomen, and being blissfully unaware that my third patients blood sugar is dropping dangerously low.  Besides the fact that I am already worried about a very ill friend in the hospital, the anniversary of my father’s death, which is sadly mirrors my early mentioned dying patient, and the fact that I’m going to now be late leaving work and I still have to pick up my son and make it home in time for my husband to leave for work.  In case I forgot to say it, thank you so F*CKING much!

It was evident that your mother’s health was your number one priority and not just showing what kind of A-HOLE you really are.  I mean screaming at me about your mothers 204/119 blood pressure, right in front of her was so loving and caring, I’m sure she appreaciated that, as she responded by increasing her systolic blood pressure (that’s the top number, honey) to 221 for a short time.  And the fact that you left before you knew if anything had been resolved, shows true compassion.

But, because I am a nurse, and it is also part of my job to teach, I will share with you some of my knowledge and insight.  First, acting like a pyschopath does not make me do my job any better.  I do my job regardless, not for you, not for the money (especially on days like this), not for the thanks or lack there of.  I do it because it is what I am supposed to do, it is ingrained in my soul to take care of others, regardless.  Secondly, acting this way not only offends me, but it scares the other staff members.  Demanding to speak to people, who by the way, still won’t be able to accomplish what you’re tying to get me to accomplish, only makes them run faster from you.  Proven by the Nurse Supervisor, Director of Nursing, and on-call MD all carefully avoiding any conversation with you, leaving just me, the brave floor nurse to deal with you.  And lastly, your mother is not swollen, SHE’S FAT.  In case it has escaped your realization, she’s 345 pounds!   A fact that I can understand you missing since none of you seemed to be less than 230 pounds yourself.  But please do not insult me by thinking I cannot tell the difference between fat and fluid!  And although she did have some minor swelling, something that has not changed for the 3 days I took care of her, she is also a dialysis patient, they tend to hold some extra fluid, especially on days they are not dialyzed!!!!

For future reference, if you really do think you can care for her better yourself, go right ahead.  Sign her out of the hospital AMA.  But have fun trying to figure out how to work that pesky ‘breather machine’.  And good luck getting her fat ass back and forth to the dialysis clinic, not to mention the fact that it will probably take you all 11 of your siblings just to roll her over to wipe her ass 3-4 times a day!  Also if you think you know what medicines she should be on, then by all means, quit your crappy job and go to medical school and then you can be her physician.  In the mean time, know that I am not her MD, and I cannot make her MD do something he doesn’t want to.  I cannot make him answer the 10 pages I sent out, and I cannot just ‘give her some medicine’. 

I was her nurse, an RN, which means Register Nut!!!  Because I will come back next week and do this shit all over again, with a smile on my face.  And although I won’t get the pleasure of dealing with you again, even I’m not that sadistic, there will no doubt be more f*cked up family members in my future!

Toodles,

A nurse who came back to wipe away your mothers tears long after you all had left!

Save a Megabyte, keep your useless beauracratic officialism on paper!

I had a thought recently.  Rare and frightening, I know.  It occured while reading a nurse blog post complaining about JCAHO and the accompanying paperwork.  Although I have plenty of paperwork to do between my daily hospital admits and home health admits, it seems as though ERNursey has just a few more.  And for a minute, I was glad.  But then, a terrible dread came over me.  I was panicked, tachycardic, SOB, and diaphoretic. 

Currently both of my positions still utilize the original (and IMHO, the simplest) form of documentation, paper.  But eventually it will change to electronic.  I do not look forward to this, as I am not one who typically welcomes change easily.  Especially since Hospital Chaos has already tried to make this change, even though all the bugs weren’t worked out of the program, even though the nurses expressed how much double and triple documenting they would be doing without the suits even pretending like they cared, thereby further decreasing our patient care time, even though we didn’t even have enough freaking computers for everyone to chart on, even though this was a pilot e-doc program and we were the guinnea pigs.  Luckily someone grew some brain axons and decided to postpone the project for now…..but I digress.

I became so anxious because I realized that even though we have way too much paperwork now, the amount of new flowsheets, more detailed care plans, and various other CYA procedure sheets that could be flung upon us once we begin ‘e-doc-ing’ would be paralyzing. 

It doesn’t take too much imagination to see a time when you litearlly spend more time charting than you do provided the patient care you’ve charted.  I’ve had days where it was atleast a close tie.  Have Annie Ashen pull a PEA, and you’ll easily spend 1/2 the shift charting.  Bobbie BM ensures the laundry people have excellent job security…again, and you’ll be eating lunch while describing the qualities of his last hershey squirt.  Have Bobbie BM and Annie Ashen in the same assignment…..you’d better put on a pot of keep go Joe, take the chart to the stairwell, and start raking in the time and a half.  You are most certainly gonna chart the care more than you provided the care ! 

Have you got the password?

I’ve got the password, boy let me tell you how I’ve got the password, I’ve got loads of them floating around here.  I’ve got them by the bucket loads.

Every system I work with has a different password.  We’ve even got a web page where you login to request your passwords be given to you, or to reset them if you commit the sin of forgetting your password.  Of course you need a password to access this web page, but what happens if you forget the password to the password web page?  I don’t even want to know.

It has gotten to the point that I have a word doc on my laptop just to try and keep track of all my passwords (don’t tell the IT security goblins).  It didn’t use to be this way, but now every box I work on has a different password, some of them have multiple passwords depending on what kind of work I have to do.  I know why it is this way, but when you’ve got two pages of passwords I think I’ve had enough.  Some passwords expire if you don’t use them every week, some every month, some change every month regardless.  Passwords that have to be changed, but you can’t use anything that is close to the last six dozen passwords you have used before.  I’m running out of combinations of words and numbers that I can use.  HELP ME.

I think that most all of my co-workers have a file like mine, but I’m not sure.  If they don’t I can’t figure out how they keep them all straight.  One of the other guys on night shift showed me his file, it’s got over 150 different systems and passwords, and only a handful of them are the same.  Most of these systems won’t let you change your password.  How’s that for some crap?

You wouldn’t think it would be that hard for them to come up with one master password that will grant you access to every web page and system out there.  Just let some IT group turn your permissions on and off as needed for your job functions, we’ve already got a group that generates passwords (that are always different of course) why not just turn permissions on and off as needed.  Guess that would just be too hard huh?

Stinking passwords.

911 may I help you?

Lawdog recently wrote a post about 911 calls and cell phones, the short version is that you can always dial 911 with your phone, regardless if you have an active account with that carrier or not.  Case in point, I have a old phone in my Jeep from the last company I worked for that has not been turned on in a few years, but if the battery were good I could turn it on and make a 911 call with that phone even though I’m 3 states away from that phones home network.  You can get the full version here, look around that site if you haven’t already been there before.

Now when I first started in my line of work (for wireless phone carriers) I didn’t know this either.  I had to learn it the hard way, but that’s just about the best way (or the only way I learn according to Nurseschatzie).  The company I worked for at the time had changed the way our test phones were billed and our group ended up not paying our bill and all of our phones were turned off (two states worth of inside and outside techs worth of phones).  I was at a cub scout meeting talking up my phone system when it was shut off and all I could call was 911.  Made me, and the company I worked for at the time look real good, ‘bout par for the course I say.

Here is the skinny on 911 services for those of you who don’t know.  A few years back the Fed mandated that all carriers would have X percentage of 911 calls routing to what is known as Phase II 911.  This means that the helpful 911 operator can pull your GPS location within 10 to 20 meters or so.  Sounds great right?  Well getting to that place took some work on everyone’s part, even yours.  The carriers usually ran to a Phase 0, or Phase 1 line when this started.  Phase 0 was just a straight pipe to the 911 center for the county the site was sitting in.  There wasn’t any information passed along with this call.  Phase 1 was when the operator could see your phone number, the phone number assigned to what ever sector you were connected to, and the GPS location of the tower (so they would know your very general location).  Phase 0 required one kind of routing that was very simple, Phase 1 required a special line to the 911 center.  Phase 2 required yet another special line to the 911 center, as well as a couple of people in between who crunched data and figured out where in the world you were for the GPS stuff.  The carrier had to pay for all these new lines, as well as paying for the people in between, not to mention paying people like me to built these routing systems in the offices that connect cell towers to Ma Bell.  The 911 centers for each county (most large cities have their own separate from the county as well) had to shell out for new equipment to read all this data as well.  What did you have to do for all of this cool new big brother knows where you are kind of stuff?  You had to buy new high speed low drag phones with GPS chips in them or else none of it works anyway. 

With all that money being paid out the carriers begged and pleaded with the Fed time and time again and the deadline got pushed out a few times.  I’m pretty sure that everyone is up to standard now at least as much as they can be, there are still some smaller counties that have not upgraded enough to use Phase II yet.  The penalty for a carrier that is non-compliant is pretty stiff (I think the little mom and pop I worked for a couple of years back shelled out half a million for being late).

So, here is how your 911 calls should work now if you’ve got a newer phone and aren’t way out in the sticks somewhere. 

 You: dialing 911 to report seeing an axe murderer stealing a case of bud light 

911: Operator: 911 what is your emergency?

You: I need to report a murder and theft please.

911: (typing in the background) Sir/Mam, are you in the location where this occurred?

You: Yes I am, I’m in the parking lot and the axe murder is inside going to town on the beer cooler now.

911: Please stay on the line while I dispatch the police.

All this time the operator has been pulling information off of your phone call such as your phone number, carrier and GPS location.  They use mapping programs that match your GPS location with a local street map so they know where to send the cops.  In this case they know that you’re sitting in the parking lot of the local 7-11 on Main Street.  It’s pretty cool stuff, but most folks don’t have any idea of how much work goes into that phone call, now you know a little about it.  Go You.

I’ve talked to 911 operators all over the south and most of them are pretty cool about things.  Bigger cities are harder to work with, but they have real calls to take care of.  Most little counties hardly ever get calls, and we would all like to keep it that way.  I have made test calls at night to some places and I will be the only call they get all night.  These folks are usually the best to talk to because they are not rushed and they will take the time to find all the info on the call so I can make sure everything is set up right.  They are also the ones that will sometimes give me a hard time for not pronouncing the town, or counties name correctly.  After they find out that I’m actually on the other end of the state they are a little more understanding, and we all get a laugh out of it.  They laugh at me for not knowing where in the world they are, even though my phone call looks like I’m just down the street from them, and I get a kick out of them trying to figure out how I can sit in a large city in NC and make my call look like I’m sitting in the middle of Myrtle Beach.

One last thing, if you ever have a 911 calling issue on your cell phone don’t hesitate to call in a trouble ticket.  These tickets get all kinds of attention.  They are very high profile for every carrier that I have ever worked with.  No one wants to be on the 5 o’clock news being the scapegoat for something being murdered because they dialed 911 on the cell, but it was sent to the wrong county.  Trust me on this, these call routing tickets are important to everyone.

A tangled mess

I am convinced there are creatures living under my daughters bed.  Every night they come out to torment her in her sleep, but they are so sly and quiet that she doesn’t even notice them.  Occasionally she will wake up, but they are so tiny  she doesn’t realize they are in her bed.  I haven’t determined yet if she does something specific to irritate them, or if they just prefer little girls.  They do not seem to have any effect on the boys.  She calls them “Da Nassy Nauts”.  During the day, they collect carpet lint and other fuzzes and hold them until the attack.  Then, while she slumbers they massacre her beautiful curly hair.  Armed with the carpet fuzz, a very small teasing comb, and some kind of adhesive, they creativly weave themselves with the fuzz into her locks. 

I have tried several tactics to ward off ”Da Nassy Nauts”, all unsuccessful.  I have tried leave-in conditioner, a pony tail, letting her go to bed with wet hair, damp hair, dry hair, brushed hair, messy hair, silky pillow, cotton pillow, no pillow. Nothing seems to help. 

In the morning it’s anyones guess as to how her hair will look.  And how long it will take to brush out all those “Nassy Nauts”.  Undoubtedly there will be tears, screams, and profanity under breath, and of course, I get upset too.  The Nauts are very intricate weavers, and cannot be undone with just a good shampoo and conditioner.  That helps, but you must first brush them all out.

I know Princess and I will come though this together.  After all, I once dealt with ”Da Nassy Nauts” as well.  Although I refuse to follow the route my parents took with me…….they cut my long beautiful curly hair off!  I will be stronger than this, Princess will be stronger than this.  WE WILL OVERCOME DA NASSY NAUTS!

But, it is getting difficult.  The longer her hair is, the harder they work to destroy it.  And more time consuming and painful the solution becomes.  Often Princess wants me to stop before all of the offenders are out, but luckily she still trusts my judgement when I tell her “Da Nassy Nauts” will just multiply if not quickly taken care of.  So remember Princess and her daily struggle with Da Nauts and say an extra prayer on Tuesdays and Wednesdays - they days Mommy goes to work early, and (cue dramatic music) DADDY fixes our hair!

The evidence of their destruction is below, even on Christmas Day, ”Da Nassy Nauts” wreak havoc!

 

Well howdy there

Let’s all say hello and get acquainted what do you say? I’m NITESHIFT, no I’m not an insomniac, but I am up all night. I’m a graveyard guy, a mid monster, that guy that works all night while most of the rest of the world is tucked in bed. I work third shift so my co-workers won’t have to.

This will be a family type blog, so let’s get you introduced to them while we’re all here. First off you’ll want to meet my wife, NURSESCHATZIE. She’s a Yankee, but she’s recovering. She grew up in the middle of a very large northern city, but has fallen in love with the south and has even started talking like one of us (some of the time). She is one of those truly lucky people that were able to be what they wanted to be when they grew up, she is obviously a nurse. Next to her is #1, our oldest son. He will be a teenager one of these days and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m trying to teach him about being a man and how to go about it, but we’re both hard headed so it doesn’t always take. Those two little carpet commandos hanging onto #1’s knees are the twins. The bigger of the two is MONSTER, let’s just say he tries to be a good kid, but seems incapable of doing so on a regular basis. He is all boy, rough, rowdy, loud, and frequently breaks things. The little curly headed one is my only daughter, PRINCESS. She is truly the apple of her daddy’s eye. I used to joke that if I ever had a daughter I would have a shotgun displayed in the living room, but then they lifted the assault weapons ban so now I’m setting my sights a little higher on the scare-the-crap-outta-anyone-who-courts-my-little-girl meter. But don’t let the her fool you, she is a princess in every sense of the word. PUDDLES is also running around here somewhere. I was not in favor of bringing a pooch home but she grows on you after a while. There is more family but they will likely be minor players, only making short appearances here and there.

Now that we’ve all been introduced I’ll just say a few things, kinda lay out the rules if you will. We will all make an effort to be polite to each other. If you get a kick out of something we ramble on about please feel free to let us know, leave a comment. If something we say rubs you the wrong way let us know about that too, but be nice about it. We’re a pretty easy going group of folks, but we will not accept some one coming into our house spouting profanity and being rude. Comments deemed to be out of line will be deleted.

Well that just about wraps it up for the seemingly required hello world first post. Feel free to look around, tell us what you think about the place, pull up a chair next to the fire and relax. Stay out of the kids room, it’s dangerous in there, and don’t touch anything in the man room. It’s dangerous in there for totally different reasons. Enjoy