Sunday, January 11, 2009

MIss me?

YEAH I am back... After being sentenced to practically the last 2 months non-stop in the ER I finally have been paroled.

As those in the medical field the holidays are a bad time for us..we are swamped. For some reason people forget about taking their meds or not consistent with them..people start hitting the bottle pretty hard or over doing it with the high fat and salty foods, decide that maybe they don't need their psych meds, and my favorite deciding family get togethers is the place for knock out drag out melees... all of this leads to increased sick patients in the ER and admissions. We have had our hospital at capacity since Thanksgiving resulting in us boarding ICU patients for days on end needing 1:1 nurse care, causing an ER staffing shortage.

Now don't get me wrong we ER nurses are very good, thorough, highly technical, advanced trained nurses...but we are NOT ICU nurses. Both types of nurses will agree with that. This is not a bad thing... just a difference. So when ER nurses are asked to work as ICU nurses it throws us for a loop causing us to change gears and thinking patterns causing our shifts to drag on for what seems like days..

So my 2 month sentence has felt like years... I am glad to see daylight again and be back here as I have missed you all and my place to vent...

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