Christmas by myself this year!
(Source: Head Nurse)
Source: Head Nurse - December 24, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
How I learned to stop worrying and stopped giving a shit--and became a better nurse.
It's the classic nursing moment: after you've spent uncounted minutes putting a gorgeously neat, clean dressing on a wound, a doctor walks in, takes the dressing down, and wanders off without a word.(Which makes me wonder about the nurses who reference this moment: are their doctors that unpredictable? I always catch mine in the morning and ask when they plan to round; it's easier to work in a dressing change after six neurosurgery residents have looked at it. Maybe they don't have easily-cowed residents.)That, at the very least, prompts an eye-roll and the exhalation of breath through gritted teeth. That's the bottom of t...
Source: Head Nurse - December 16, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
This is not Thug Kitchen.
However, I have a roll recipe for your motherf.ers that you are gonna love.This is what I bring to every holiday gathering, and have brought since forever. It's a soft, white, not-too-sweet, not-too-salty, buttery bread that you can make into loaves, or into rolls, or into a braid. It is incredibly easy, even if you've never made bread before. It's also high in fat, totally devoid of nutritional value, and should therefore be eaten only once or twice a year.Check it out: you will need. . .one package of regular yeast, or quick-rise/bread-machine yeast, or a cake of yeast, if you roll that way. (For newbies: these packets c...
Source: Head Nurse - November 26, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
This was my week:
On Monday, my Sonicare toothbrush bit the dust. I'd been limping it along for months, and it finally coded and couldn't be revived.Today, I had a decision to make: I had money in the budget either for a new Sonicare or a bottle of Laphroiag.I chose Scotch. Oral care, I am not up in you right now.And this is why:On Tuesday, I was minding my own business when I saw a coworker hurpling cheerfully down the hall with what looked like a liter suction container full of bile. I shook my head and blinked twice, and damned if it wasn't a liter suction container full of bile.Now, normally when one is faced with a quart or more of str...
Source: Head Nurse - November 13, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
We need our own goddamned poster.
Recently, the unit I work in won an award. It was one of those not-Press-Ganey awards; the kind of award that has to do with things that are nursing quality indicators. You know, the "you haven't had a central-line infection in two years; here's a cookie" kind, but bigger.Much bigger.And it was nurse-driven, nurse-implemented, and exacting. And national. So, kind of a big deal.During the hootenanny surrounding the award, we were shown a slide of everybody (so said the CEO of the hospital) who'd had a hand in making Such A Great Thing possible.There, front and center, was the CEO. Next to him was the director of nursing ope...
Source: Head Nurse - November 11, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
So, finally, my patient died.
Once in a very long while you get somebody under your hands who ought to have been let go months before.We had somebody like that the other month: multiple surgeries for a brain tumor that was not going to go away (grade IV glioblastoma), multiple rounds of chemo and radiation, and in the middle of all of that, a surgery for an abscess that led to wound-vac sponges all down one side of the poor sot's body.The spouse didn't want to let them go. The mother didn't want to let them go. The brother didn't particularly say one way or the other.Ever smell a person who is, quite literally, rotting from the inside out? It's not fun...
Source: Head Nurse - November 1, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
Conclusions.**
Conclusion the first: The first reaction on the part of everydamnbody has been to blame the nurses. From the first inkling that Mr. Duncan's diagnosis was missed to the news that a second nurse was infected, the director of the CDC and the administration of Presbyterian Dallas have pointed to the RNs as the weak links in a chain.I'm sorry, guys (because they are all, frankly, guys, and NOT nurses): in order for a f.up of this magnitude to happen, a number of links in your chain of failsafes have to break. It doesn't matter if you have a "health care team" if members of that team only see each other in the bathroom and when...
Source: Head Nurse - October 15, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
An excellent op-ed from a Minion in lovely EnZedd. . .
This is what we all should be worried about. (Source: Head Nurse)
Source: Head Nurse - October 15, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
In Which Jo Has Doubts About Her Floor.
WARNING: THIS IS A RENOVATION, NON-NURSING POST. IF YOU DON'T LIKE HEARING ABOUT CONSTRUCTION OR DEMO, GO ELSEWHERE.Some of you longer-term minions might remember when I bought Casa DogHair and renovated the bathroom. The shortest version, for those of you who haven't sobered up yet, is this:The people who owned CDH before me were both of some size. They were also not good with maintenance. This led to the bathroom being entirely rotted out in vital areas, which in turn led to Then Boyfriend and I redoing it.I should mention here that Then Boyfriend had a weird work schedule and I was working all the time, so I had very li...
Source: Head Nurse - October 12, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
Meh.
I've decided it's not the heat here in Central Texas that bothers me; it's how long it lasts. I could easily handle a worse summer than we've had here--only a couple of days over 100 degrees!--if it just ended sooner.Something about the constant bright sunlight and the lows in the 80's really wears me down.So does work. Work is wearing me the hell down, People.I almost had to call in the Ethics Peeps this week. Mama is dying of a nasty sort of metastatic cancer that's hit her brain, liver, spine, and various other bits of important equipment. She has a midline incision from her breastbone on down that won't heal, a couple ...
Source: Head Nurse - August 28, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
What I thought/What I said
The interviewer asked, "What's making you want to leave your current job?"I'm tired of watching my coworkers coming in, looking defeated.I haven't had a sit-down lunch in six weeks. One of my coworkers weaned her baby early because she couldn't get anybody to relieve her so she could pump breastmilk.Our acuity increased at the same time our director cut our staff, so there are delays in care that I find unacceptable.We've been rebranded a "step-down" unit, so none of us will get critical-care raises or credit, but we're still taking CCU patients. We still float to the CCUs.The attitude of the administration to our unit is ...
Source: Head Nurse - August 13, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
I finally got the hog skull clean and got another Cancer Buddy.
Our network reaches around the world. It is above the law, beyond the government, and untouchable by the church. No power in the 'Verse can stop us.So I was talking (ie, emailing) to my newest Cancer Bud tonight, and I twigged hard on something she said to me: that her dread of chemo was "just me feeling sorry for myself." It kinda set me off.Back when I was recovering from having my mouth resected, I posted something in which I vented about feeling sick, and tired, and not knowing what was going to happen, and being in pain. And a very well-meaning commenter pointed out that I should suck it up and deal, because after all...
Source: Head Nurse - July 16, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
There's a hog skull in my kitchen, next to the stove.
It's soaking in three-percent peroxide as we speak.I spent the early morning taking it out of its enzyme bath, scraping bristles and cartilage, miraculously rehydrated, off its surface. Then I soaked it all day in Dawn dishwashing detergent and warm water, to see if it needed degreasing. It didn't. So now it's soaking, upside down and looking rather ghastly, in a sixteen-quart Sterilite container with lid, on special at Target for $2.59.It has two unerupted molars and inch-and-a-half long tusks that curve out and up, leading me to believe that this was a 14-month-old (or thereabouts) male hog. I know it's male; I do not kn...
Source: Head Nurse - June 1, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
Contrary to how I might sound here,
I am rarely in a mood to authentically injure somebody.Yesterday was different.We've had staffing changes and new responsibilities added and a whole bunch of other bidness I won't go into; suffice to say that things have been tense and difficult for the last couple of weeks.It was 1430. I'd spent three hours trying to keep an insufficiently-sedated patient from crawling out of an MRI tube, then gotten gut-punched. People on ventilators, even if they're sedated, can come up with a surprising amount of will and strength and coordination.I wanted a cup of coffee. Correction: I was dying for a cup of coffee. The floor manager ...
Source: Head Nurse - May 24, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
Oh, hai.
It's been. . .a month? Six weeks? Seven weeks?God, who knows. All I know these days is getting up in the dark, working under artificial lights, going home in the dark, and praying for the sweet, sweet release of death.Not really. But close.In the time since I last caught up with you guys, I have survived The Annual Music Festival That Makes My Commute Home Even More Unpleasant, three more checkups with various CANSUH doctors (all clear!), and a staffing reduction.Because when you win awards and have fantastic patient outcomes and get featured in advertising campaigns, with pictures and everything, that's how you're rewarde...
Source: Head Nurse - May 21, 2014 Category: Nurses Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
