Shift 77 and 78

Shift 77:
Not too bad of a day.  It was pretty steady during day shift, and slowly during night shift it slowed down.  By the time I left at 2am, there were 6 patients in the ER and 4 of them were in the process of being discharged. There was no one in the waiting room and there were no fire rescues on the way, so in just a few minutes, there would only be 2 patients left.I had one really sick patient who ended up going to ICU.  When I went to bring the patient up to ICU, I noticed a family member of a patient I had last week who went to the Medical floor and now is in the ICU. I stopped in the room on my way back downstairs and found out she wasn't doing well, wasn't responding and ended up transferring to the ICU and is currently not doing well.  Breaks my heart.  I hate seeing that.  The good news is that the family member's brother who was also in the hospital for over a month is finally home.




Shift 78:
Today marks the halfway point of my first year being an ER nurse.  I started on the floor in January and as of today, I will have completed half of the shifts I will complete in a52 week time period.  I can't believe how much more I know now than I knew 6 months ago, but yet I still have so much more to learn.  We'll see where the rest of the year takes me.


Anyway, this shift started out pretty well.  It was slow actually.  During day shift, I relieved lunches and then floated.  I went on my lunch break before shift change because I knew we were going to be short on staff during night shift.  On my way back from the cafeteria, I run into the family of the patient in ICU that I keep running into.  I talked with them a few minutes in the hallway before I had to run back to clock back in.  After shift change, things started to pick up.  It got a little busy, not insane, but busy. I had a patient who had really high blood pressure that we could not get to go down.  I ended up having to give a very potent blood pressure medication that I have never given before and it finally started to go down.  Her initial blood pressures were crazy.  Something like 237/112 when textbook normal is 120/80. Way too high of a blood pressure.  Patient ended up going to ICU because of the medication she was on.  A patient on it needs to have their blood pressure monitored constantly and that just can't be done on the floors.

Other than that, nothing else interesting going on during the shift.  And now I am off for 5 days.  Five days to try to get my new house in some kind of order.  No rest for the weary.