Friday, August 31, 2012

Paging Dr. Ass

A patient arrived by ambulance for some very minor injury, very minor. She was triaged at an ESI level 4.
I got her situated in the room and told her that her chart would go into the doctor's rack. She would be seen soon.

"How long is soon?"

"As soon as a doctor picks up the chart and comes into the room. I don't know what patients they are seeing right now, but you will be seen soon."

"You tell the doctor to get his ass in here now!! ASS HERE NOW!!"

"I'll relay your message..."

I told the doctors in their computer room what the patient had said. One of them took the chart, looked it over, and placed it back in the rack.
"I'll be in there later.....I just ate lunch and my ass will be ready to talk to her in about an hour."

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Waaawa Waawa Wawaaaa....

I was assigned to triage the other day. In one of my previous few entries I've written - it sucks the ever loving life force from me and transforms me into a bitter shell of a person. Like I enter the triage area a plum and leave a prune, like a grape to a raisin, like a .....you get the idea.
After a few hours of it, all patients begin to sound like the adults on Charlie Brown/ Peanuts cartoons....Waaawaaa  wawaaawa   waaaawa.

I have 3 people at this point to triage and look out of the door to eyeball them. The one I was going to take next is laughing, playing with her phone and ignoring her children who were running around the waiting room.
So, I took someone else.

When I got to her, she walks in with her 2 rambunctious kids and her husband/boyfriend/babydaddy/whatever (H/B/BD/W). Both can't bother to look up from their phones. I start triaging her and she still won't stop texting or surfing or whatever the hell she was doing. I told her she would have to get off her phone during the triage time, cells phone are not allowed to be used during triage.

"Here, finish my e-mail to the DOCTOR'S OFFICE about how SICK I AM." and she hands her phone to H/B/BD/W. Then turns to me with a disgusted face and says, "WELL..."

H/B/BD/W who can't take his eyes off of his own cell phone mumbles something.
I ask him to repeat what he said because obviously it was directed at me.

"If you gonna be rude then we can go somewhere else. We don't have to go here."

"No, you don't. Our policy is no cell phone use in the triage area" <He's still not off the frickin' thing> "That is why I asked you to stop using it. Do you want me to continue or are you going to leave?"

I triaged her and sent them back to the lobby to wait since they had so much texting and e-mails to send.
She went right back on the damned thing and he never looked up once.
I secretly wished that they would trip over something while looking at their phones, so I could have had at least one laugh that day.




Monday, August 27, 2012

Testicles, Girlie, testicles!

I walk into the patient's room after seeing his chief complaint and had time to start the ball rolling before the ER doc came into to see him.
He was in the bed, crumped down with a scowl on his face. He was like the typical cantankerous old poops I've been dealing with lately.

"You gonna take my blood?"
"I'm going to start an IV and draw blood."
"Good luck with that. Are you any good? No one gets me on the first try. I have crappy veins."
I began to look at one arm, getting the lay of the land so to speak.

"I asked you are you any good? Haven't you found anything yet? Ahh, you're not going to get it."
"What's your hurry? I'm looking at your arms. Let me do my thing"
I asked him about his pain while looking.

"It starts here and goes down into this testicle. Girlie.......testicle. Testicle! Do you even know what a testicle is?"
"Ummm, no. I missed that day of nursing school. Is it like a tonsil?" I smiled at him and I saw a glimmer of a smirk back. His wife had a great sense of humor and laughed.
"You're going to totally not get this IV. Are you good at it?"
"I guess we'll see....they usually only let me clean the rooms, but the nurses said I can stick you with needles today."
I got the IV - no problem.
"Well, damn. I didn't think you were going to get it."
" No, you didn't"
"What? What did you say?"
"I said - In -Your- Face! Mr. Poopy Patient. In your face." I said this as I bundled him up like a little baby in a bunch of warm blankets. "There. Now you're almost cute."
"Get the hell outta here," he said with a smirk.
"Oh, I'll be watching you.....I'm watching you..."

I love my little cranky ole male patients. I'd like to smack them upside the head, but it's fun to try to turn them into smiling cranks.