People Caring For People

That's the "slogan", or "motto" of our corporation.

It's had to write about work everyday when you only work 2-3 times a week. I wish I had a mental VCR or something, to record everything that happens during the day; then I could go back and reflect on the moments that are worth it. Everything happens so fast in the ER that you don't have time to register everything that's going on. Alot of the time you're on auto-pilot.

When some people go on auto-pilot, that slogan which we so fervently try to maintain in our day to day activities is completely forgotten. They become like machines, treating each patient as an object of sorts. Some of my co-workers are good at the technical skills required to be a nurse (such as starting an IV, drawing blood without leaving a gigantic bruise, etc.), but they lack the people skills to keep up that "people caring for people" frame of mind.

Some nurses don't know how to talk to the children in ways that can comfort them; others have no tact in dealing with parents. In some extremes, some nurses (which lack both the people skills AND technical skills of the job) are perfectly OK with poking and prodding a child a thousand times before they actually get some blood or start that IV. Umm, excuse me, but last time I checked there was a crying child in front of you. Give him a break for god's sake. Our job is to alleviate the pain, not make it worse.

My rule (and most everyone else's rule in the department) is "2 strikes you're out". If you can't get that blood draw or that IV in two tries, you let someone else give it a shot.

The other day I was helping a nurse start an IV on a child. This will probably have no meaning to people outside the field, but she used a 24 gauge needle/catheter set to start the IV on the child. She wasn't having much luck threading the catheter (which means getting it into the vein properly). She had already retracted the needle and thrown it out, while the catheter remained inside the child. She felt like she might be able to save the IV if she tried threading the catheter again (which would require her to open another needle/catheter set to use the needle and insert it into the old catheter). While this is perfectly acceptable, you MUST use the same size needle and catheter (and common sense will tell you this). In this case, however, the nurse decided to open a 22 gauge set and use that needle to try to thread a 24 gauge catheter (keep in mind, 22 gauge sets are larger than 24 gauge sets) into the vein. I'm not sure what the expression on my face was (I didn't want to frighten the parents), but inside, my jaw dropped. I could not believe this nurse's stupidity. I wondered if she'd gotten her nursing degree from one of those phony online colleges, where you pay 300 bucks and they send you a degree via mail. One of the first skills that they teach you in nursing school is how to properly start an IV, and inform you of the dangers to the patient should you do it improperly. What was she thinking?! She could have ruptured the plastic catheter using the bigger needle, causing pieces of it to flow through the child's bloodstream. Does that sound safe to you?

I don't know where the problem originated, but if this is the way nursing schools are training new graduates, I don't want anyone of them taking care of me. We might as well use robots to treat patients. It would be more cost efficient that way anyway. I shudder at the thought of someone so incompetent with their life in my hands.