Shift 37 and 38

Shift 37:

Not too bad of a day, we had a lot of staff as far as both nurses and techs. I took my break around 8:30pm, and then when I got back I had a few minutes until I had to go to a training class for the new fancy phones we're going to start using in a week. Then I got back and it was still pretty nice for the rest of the night. No real interesting patients, nothing special to report.

Shift 38:

I wake up at 11:15am to the sound of my alarm. Not 2 minutes later, my phone rings and its work asking if I could come in early- they are slammed and haven't even started doing lunches yet.

Here's how it normally goes. There are two nurses at 7am, one at 9am, and one or two that come in at 11am. Usually, by the time I get in, the 7am nurses have already gone to lunch. Occasionally, the 9am nurse has gone too, but mostly I start off relieving them for lunch. Today we only had one 11am nurse. So I get there and one of the 7am nurses is at lunch, the charge nurse was covering for her. I relieved the other 7am nurse for her lunch, and then once she got back, there were a ton of patients that needed to be transported to the floors but we were short on tech staff, so I helped out there. I had to help everyone do many things because it was just one of those days. Then, at one point, I had to help cover for triage because the triage nurse had to go to the phone class I went to the night before. Patients just kept coming in through the waiting room, and fire rescues just kept bringing patients by ambulance. It was definitely a crazy day. To top it off, the 9am never got her lunch until 6:30pm. I relieved her, just as she was getting not one, but TWO fire rescue patients, one of which happened to be a relative of a very important hospital person- talk about stress. The nurse I covered for came back just as it was time for shift change, and the poor 11am nurse still hadn't had her lunch break yet. I think she finally went at like 8:30pm or so. One of the night nurses didn't make it in due to car trouble, so we all had full assignments and it was busy at the same time. I think it finally slowed down around 10ish. I finally went to lunch around 10:30pm- or was it 11:30pm??- I can't even remember at this point. When I got back, I didn't have any more patients, and I basically just caught up on my paperwork, and helped triage a couple of patients, and stayed until my charge nurse came back from her break, and then I went home. I was supposed to leave at 12:30am since I came in early, and I think I left around 1:15am. It was a LOOONGGG day and one where everyone really was stressed out about. One of the 7am nurses didn't leave until like 9pm I think. It was crazy. Still not as bad as the one day we had a few weeks ago, but I would say a close second, or third. It was bad. No real interesting patients or anything, but I will say I have seen several patients come into the ER with REALLY high blood sugars during the last two shifts. I mean 3 patients in 2 days with sugars over 500?? It happens sometimes, I suppose.

I'd love to get to the point where I don't feel as stressed as I do sometimes. I mean, I guess we all feel that way on days like today. I know the other nurse was so happy when I was there and when I asked her if we were busy, she said "SO busy!!" I really like my job, I just hate the stressed feeling that comes with it at times.

On a side note, one more shift and I will be a quarter of the way done with my first year as an ER nurse. How time flies!