Pager Vs.The Paged

     On those rare occasions that I get some  sit down time during shifts, I often attempt to chat up and get to know some of my colleagues. Whether it be a fellow nurse, nurse manager, nursing assistant or hospital clerk. We often vent about the difficult patients, laugh uncontrollably from the ridiculous  ones, cry from the truly crazy or stool incontinent ones.  Sometimes, we even share pictures of our newest purchases, and discuss our hopeful vacation hot spots. 

      On a recent holiday, while many bankers, school teachers, city workers and even some surgeons had the luxury of sleeping in and not needing to trek out to their workplace in negative degree weather, I myself had a small luxury of being assigned to some well behaved patients which allowed me to become acquainted with the surgical resident on call.  

     Amidst our random chitchat about patients statuses and comparing our levels of exhaustion, our banter was interrupted by the nagging buzzing sounds of his beeper. After complying with the requests of the nurse on the other end of the pager, we began to compare notes regarding being on each side of that beeper;the woes of both the pager and the paged. 

     As a nurse we are given a pager that connects us with a another person who can make decisions regarding our patient's care. This allows us to communicate when we need the necessary or the menial things that are outside our scope of practice, such as prescriptions signed and orders readjusted. Often times these pagers are our source of communication when an incision dehisces or eviscerates, when our patients take an unexpected turn for worse and need the immediate attention from the doctor. However, too often we use these pagers as a way of badgering the team to come speak to patient's family who are badgering us nurses for the direct attention of the surgical team, or even just to clarify something regarding patient care. Our pages aren't often unnecessary, or so I thought, but often to cover us/our licenses.  In the  event that a detrimental event occur, it was known that we did attempt to intervene before that event occurred- and to enhance patient satisfaction with our attempts for timely care.  

     After I  shared my extensive list of reasons of why  I may need to badger the poor, tired, overworked yet on some occasion ruggedly handsome resident for his attention; this particular tired, overworked and yes, ruggedly handsome resident described the woes of answering our incessant paging. He is on call for 24 hours, has 16+ patients under his responsibility in comparison to our 4-5, he can't even make all the decisions because he must often answer to the Attending, plus he often gets paged for those menial tasks such as signing a prescription, so we can discharge our patient before noon, while he is dealing with a suddenly hypotensive patient on another unit two floors down.

     Our discussion describing the endless list of reasons for a nurse's constant paging and a resident either being rude or ignoring the pages went back and forth for a while. It was concluded by yet a page from another unit requiring the resident's immediate attention, and my patient's call bell buzzing for my attention. 

     

     We agreed to be understanding, but most importantly polite; and promised to continue the argument of the pager vs. the paged until the next holiday, or for that very  rare calm day. 

     I'm now sometimes hesitant to page for a menial deal because I have somewhat a greater understanding regarding what is going on on the other side of the pager. 

I page anyway, to cover my butt; and other residents still either delay returning the page or begrudgingly answer it;  but I am slightly more apologetic for my badgering, consistently more polite, and somewhat more tolerant of my pages going ignored. 

My NYC Landmark

     A NYC landmark; my lamppost; my road-sign;my light at the end of a long day gone by; my version of sunrise for a future workday ahead. 

#NYCstateofmind #crossroads #savinglives #lifeofnurseauntyD

Outweighed

She was a large patient, and in hospital definitions, a "Bariatric" patient. Her accommodations necessitated a specialized bariatric bed, specialized bariatric chair, and  a bariatric lift to move her in and out of bed or to reposition her. Prior to attaining access to the lift, it took four-five of us on the unit to gather in cohesive effort to position the patient. Every part of her care took extra time and effort from whomever was her assigned nurse for the day, and for every other staff member on the unit.

She was a sweet lady, in fact she was a nurse, and every time I walked in to her room I made a conscious effort to overlook her enormous size and focus as an educated professional on her clinical care. I made conversation, asked her about her experiences as a nurse, and included her family in her care.

Her prognosis wasn’t good, and in addition to her size, her body was a further spectacle due to her many lines and drains, as well as her skin’s condition, due to her immobilized state and her health situation.   

In nursing school we were drilled about self focusing prior to entering a room, so that while in the room with the patient the primary and professional focus is on the patient. Of course her size was topic of conversation on the unit, it was inevitable. Just the mere fact that she was 6 times my own weight, called for some conversation among the staff. However, unlike some of the surgical residents on Grey’s Anatomy, the staff on the unit all made sure that nor she or her family members were within earshot as we questioned and speculated the monstrosity of both her size and clinical situation. We questioned how she came to this state, and how she lived like that, it was a thought provoking situation, but while she was in earshot, she was just like any other patient, until…

There were four of us in the room, assisting with the repositioning for cleaning ( #lifeofanurse). As we some of us held her, others cleaned, all with serious faces as if it were anyone else. Suddenly midst one of the nurses  toiling with the cleaning, the patient let out a roar of gas into the face of  the nurse. 

That moment expelled two drastically opposite reactions on all those individuals standing in the room. It was hilarious, or at least called for some bouts of laughter, but no one let out a peep. It was also sad that one had to be succumbed to a condition of being unable to control their own body, nor move on their own, but to be totally dependent on others for care. Standing in the room seconds after something like that, would have anyone having gone through it blushing like a ripened tomato and anyone witnessing it howling with laughter.One would have never guessed that anything out of ordinary occurred. We all continued our roles as usual, finished with her care, and waited until we were in the back of the nursing station that we let out our understandable bouts of giggles.

We are only human, and yes on occasion, what is hilarious to one can be drastically humiliating to the one it’s about. However, my colleagues and I, allowed our professionalism to outweigh our inherent rush of feelings and reactions. We may be novice nurses in expertise and nursing skills, but that day we crossed the bridge from novice to expert in regard to professionalism and compassion.