Celebrating, just awake with a hacking cough. Thank goodness I finally found some cough medicine which helped me to get back to sleep only took an hour, but at 0200, when you think you may go to the 24 hour drug store...it was a LIFE SAVER!
And to all our folks up north, hope you enjoyed your Canada Day. I was thinking about you and several of my old pals up in Winterpeg and Montreal yesterday.
Miss you guys lots!
More (cough) later...
Showing posts with label coughing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coughing. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Taking some advice
Mondays are a blast at the Hotel. I'm always in for a surprise or two. Today's menu included:
1. Two pieces of equipment down. Guess who got to resolve their issues...me! Why? We were short tech folks today.
2. I get the call, "you need to go to xx clinic". No biggie. Was going over that way anyway. Since most of their patients are on holiday (or just didn't bother to schedule an appointment), it was dead slow, which gave me plenty of time to talk to the nursing supervisor, etc.
3. While I was at a meeting today, one of the docs told me, "Haven't you toughed out that cold long enough? I think it's time for a Z-pack." Off I go at lunch to call my PCP.
4. I miss an afternoon meeting. Why? Well, a patient who just needed "one little thing done" stayed for an hour. I couldn't resolve his issue, so he called two 800 numbers and then one transferred him three times until he got someone who took his info and will have to call him back.
I wasn't too upset on the last one. That would have been one meeting too many today.
And finally, I got to call our clerk to figure out where one patients ride was. It seems he/she called earlier, but had been roaming around waiting for the ride to no avail. I left and they still hadn't come.
So I gave the patient the ombudsman number and directions to the nurses' station, so they would make sure he/she was off without a hitch.
Tomorrow, thankfully, is another day. And so it goes...
Stay tuned!
1. Two pieces of equipment down. Guess who got to resolve their issues...me! Why? We were short tech folks today.
2. I get the call, "you need to go to xx clinic". No biggie. Was going over that way anyway. Since most of their patients are on holiday (or just didn't bother to schedule an appointment), it was dead slow, which gave me plenty of time to talk to the nursing supervisor, etc.
3. While I was at a meeting today, one of the docs told me, "Haven't you toughed out that cold long enough? I think it's time for a Z-pack." Off I go at lunch to call my PCP.
4. I miss an afternoon meeting. Why? Well, a patient who just needed "one little thing done" stayed for an hour. I couldn't resolve his issue, so he called two 800 numbers and then one transferred him three times until he got someone who took his info and will have to call him back.
I wasn't too upset on the last one. That would have been one meeting too many today.
And finally, I got to call our clerk to figure out where one patients ride was. It seems he/she called earlier, but had been roaming around waiting for the ride to no avail. I left and they still hadn't come.
So I gave the patient the ombudsman number and directions to the nurses' station, so they would make sure he/she was off without a hitch.
Tomorrow, thankfully, is another day. And so it goes...
Stay tuned!
Friday, March 6, 2009
Hot Friday
The unit (and some of our patients) was steaming...literally and figuratively.
As usual, in our neck of the woods, it was hot today. No one told this to the HVAC people, who last year, were lucky enough to have the heat on in mid-May when we had a cold spell. Oh, the joy of rooms that are so hot, patients sticking around in them get sick and vomit. This happened to one of our characters today...just as I was finishing my lunch.
His nurse of course, was nowhere to be found when he first started retching. I got the lucky job of elevating his head, turning it and getting him a bucket. By that time, it was too late. He was a mess. His nurse did show up and I did stick around to help her clean him up and get the doc to look at him, since he's a nice guy and he just doesn't normally do that. He had some other complaints that seemed a bit strange, so we gave him the full treatment...EKG and all. No surprise that after we got his IV access started he tells everyone, "I sure feel better now that I threw up!"
I had the same two patients and Mr. Colo. (They're still working on a colostomy for him...he needs it). I was working with some new nurses, too, so that made things interesting. Trying to demonstrate new stuff and have patients cooperate can be a challenge. Fridays are busy days and one of my normally reasonable characters got crabby fast. He wanted to be "waited on first". Thankfully, the charge nurse helped me out, but I was guilty only of not being able to be in two places at once.
This character is an anxious respiratory mess and you know that ABC stuff (airway, breathing, circulation)...well, he knows the routine and he just hams it up. Just for grins, I put him on an O2 sat monitor, as I start his trach trial (he needs to be plugged for several hours for his trip home). What do you know, he sats in the 90s all the time. All his entreaties for suction, etc., were driving me nuts. I just made him cough up the little bit of sputum he has (always white), because he needs to know how to do it. I still had to suction him twice this afternoon and he made a big mess going back to bed. Happily, I had a helper, so we got done reasonably quickly, but it was still a mess.
My other patients were reasonably less demanding, even the more demanding one. We kept his water cup filled and he was happy. It didn't hurt that I found an ice cream for him at lunch, either!
Needless to say, this wet and tired nurse was so happy to get out of Dodge and get a shower at home. The temperature at home was a delight. The night is young and so is the weekend, which I'll enjoy two days in a row off.
It doesn't get any better! More to come...
As usual, in our neck of the woods, it was hot today. No one told this to the HVAC people, who last year, were lucky enough to have the heat on in mid-May when we had a cold spell. Oh, the joy of rooms that are so hot, patients sticking around in them get sick and vomit. This happened to one of our characters today...just as I was finishing my lunch.
His nurse of course, was nowhere to be found when he first started retching. I got the lucky job of elevating his head, turning it and getting him a bucket. By that time, it was too late. He was a mess. His nurse did show up and I did stick around to help her clean him up and get the doc to look at him, since he's a nice guy and he just doesn't normally do that. He had some other complaints that seemed a bit strange, so we gave him the full treatment...EKG and all. No surprise that after we got his IV access started he tells everyone, "I sure feel better now that I threw up!"
I had the same two patients and Mr. Colo. (They're still working on a colostomy for him...he needs it). I was working with some new nurses, too, so that made things interesting. Trying to demonstrate new stuff and have patients cooperate can be a challenge. Fridays are busy days and one of my normally reasonable characters got crabby fast. He wanted to be "waited on first". Thankfully, the charge nurse helped me out, but I was guilty only of not being able to be in two places at once.
This character is an anxious respiratory mess and you know that ABC stuff (airway, breathing, circulation)...well, he knows the routine and he just hams it up. Just for grins, I put him on an O2 sat monitor, as I start his trach trial (he needs to be plugged for several hours for his trip home). What do you know, he sats in the 90s all the time. All his entreaties for suction, etc., were driving me nuts. I just made him cough up the little bit of sputum he has (always white), because he needs to know how to do it. I still had to suction him twice this afternoon and he made a big mess going back to bed. Happily, I had a helper, so we got done reasonably quickly, but it was still a mess.
My other patients were reasonably less demanding, even the more demanding one. We kept his water cup filled and he was happy. It didn't hurt that I found an ice cream for him at lunch, either!
Needless to say, this wet and tired nurse was so happy to get out of Dodge and get a shower at home. The temperature at home was a delight. The night is young and so is the weekend, which I'll enjoy two days in a row off.
It doesn't get any better! More to come...
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