BLOCKED!!!!

My hospital has blocked me from accessing blogspot at work!

I can understand facebook but blocking my ability to vent about how ridiculous the new policies and administrations decisions are in just going too far! I am sure this is a violation of some right I have. I'm sure I have a legitimate grievance here I can file with the union.... hmmm now if only I could remember which union I work for....

I'M BACK!!!!

After almost 6 months of turmoil in our ER and 75+ hour work weeks , I am finally back to writing!


In the last 6 months my ER has gone thru major changes both physically and personnel wise that has not always been for the benefit of the employees or the patients, but great for the hospital's bottom line. A few of those changes including firing the ER MD group and hiring a mega group from out of state, expanding our ER physically without hiring more staff and cracking down on the PC of the ER staff and environment. Our morale in the ER could not get any worse...


After 20+ years of service our ER group was fired and replaced by a corporation from out of state that is determined to make us over into a carbon copy of their other take overs. Our patients are losing continuity of care from MDs that has taken care of the community for 20+ years and they are losing the relationship our ER Drs have had with community and hospital based specialists.


Our ER has expanded physically by opening up an overflow area 24 hours a day but not having the appropriate amount of staff hired to do it.. on average the nurse in that pod works alone with 5+ patients without a tech or secretary and not properly stocked or set up to run as a full time unit. Our Express Care area (walk in clinic) has expanded it's hours--but oh yeah not hired the nurses to operate it....... Brilliant.


And the last major change amongst a million other small changes is the cracking down on inappropriate behavior AKA "NOT PC" comments, attitudes AND attire of the staff. Yes yours truly has been recently compared to (along with her other com padres) TRUCKERS! ( I wonder if I should tell my boss I take that as a compliment as I have always secretly wanted to drive one of those big rigs?!) Apparently it is not appropriate to swear or make judgemental comments in our nurse's station that is a 90% glass soundproof enclosure.. Seriously?


Sorry administration but I am a cranky bitchy nurse that isn't going to change who I am because your white shirt high polished shoe wearing candied asses are offended by what I have to say. If you don't like it, stay in your comfy offices pushing pencils and keep out of my ER where we aren't afraid to get a little dirty and real with our patients.

Front Row

We all know that the economy has gone to sh**, sadly those of us in healthcare have gotten a front row seat in the impact this has had on our communities.

In the last couple months our SI\SA (suicide ideation,suicide attempts) have drastically increased. Before we would get people "attempting" suicide more for attention getting behavior than from depression. Now on average I deal with 2-3 true attempts a shift. These are patients that by shear luck someone has found them and called 911.

The despair these patients and their families find themselves in I cant even imagine. The sad story is that time and time again there are children involved, so not only have they been helplessly watching their parents struggling to make ends meet but now have to deal with fact that their parent choose the easier answer of death than the harder fight of staying with them and protecting them albeit with a less flashy lifestyle.

While I fight to keep these families together, I cross the hall and walk into another patient's room and advocate for the destruction of another.. The DV (domestic violence) rates are shooting up. Patients ,in particular women are showing up in droves with injuries that only a closed fist or boot could make. They come in with their bogus stories and babies that look at me with timid faces telling me about their Mommy's "ouchie". My heart breaks for these children stuck in almost a lose lose situation.. Stay in the current situation and watch the abuse and become a victim of it as well, or have mommy leave and end up on the street or living in the car because so many shelters are full right now.

I wish I had a solution... I pray the President does as I see only things getting worse as my community looks down the barrel at the upcoming layoff planned for the end of this month at our local major employer.

Influenza update

Back in October I was wondering aloud about how effective this years Influenza Vaccination was going to be and B*tching about the CDC pushing for all healthcare workers and children under 18 to be vaccinated. I held the opinion that until they perfected the makeup of the vaccine and not making it an educational guess I would not get the vaccine for me or my children.

Well according to their website today 146 million vaccines were made.. of those they have projected 85.8 million adults and children have been vaccinated. As of today the CDC reports that 52,199 influenza tests have been given to patients with 1,173 testing positive and resulting in one death a pediatric. The CDC also admits that this years vaccine does not cover the Influenza B strain out there meaning that the vaccine is only 50% effective...

With this information I am still OK with my decision, but look forward to science perfecting this vaccine as I know the benefit of it for those at high risk..

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...