Mes Cher Amis..

Dearest Nurses:

Please do not come and yell at me when you cannot find a patient's chart.
After assembling it, I put it in one of two places:

1) The triage desk
2) The acute chart bin

That's it. After placing it in one of these, I no longer have any contact with said chart.

That way it will save you time, because, you will not have to come back and apologize when you realize that the medical student was the one who walked off with it.

Dearest Medical Residents:

Please do not walk off with patients before they have been registered in the system, and then come down and yell at me, that you can't order tests because they are not in the computer. You only have yourself to blame.
It will also save me ( and my vocal chords) from continuously having to trek out to the wait room, and holler that patients name, in hopes of finding them to register.

No Words of Comfort

The stretcher curtains open to reveal a young, thin, First Nations lady. Blood surrounds her head, staining the white pillow in geometric shapes; her large fawn-brown eyes stare up at me as I ask her questions.

Half way through asking her about who her family doctor is, she begins crying; her frail shoulders shaking violently. Taken aback, I watch her dark, stringy hair shadowing her bent face, while reaching for the generic floral pattern box of cheap Kleenex kept at every bedside. As I place the box in her crumpled lap, her tiny hand reaches out and grasps my arm, tightly whispering

"I'm going through a hard time..."

Before I have a chance to respond, she launches into her story, breathless, panicked;

"I was living with a guy for 6 months when yesterday morning I woke up and he wasn't there, I opened a note on the table that said he was HIV+, and that he was sorry for not telling me."

"What am I going to tell me children?"

Her tear-stained words hung in the air.

I stood by her bed and held her hand, until she finally cried herself to sleep, watching her small exhausted body rise and fall; giving way to the steady rhythm of sleep.

There was nothing I could say that would make it alright.

Curse of the Computer

I always forget how much I rely on computers until they break! Already within the past couple of months I have had the hard-drive on my personal computer fizzle; and dislodged the hard-drive on my boyfriend's one after knocking it over.

Today it happened right when I started my shift and attempted to log on, my screen froze and would not let me proceed; not matter how many times I manually re-booted.

Finally I called the hospital computer help-desk, the poor guy upstairs was just as baffled as I was, and had to come all the way down to Emerg to see what he could do. I spent the next 3 hours waiting while him and a colleague completely replaced my whole computer.

After the new one was installed, and the old one carted away, I gingerly re-booted and all seemed to be hunky-dory until....I tried to log in to the program we use to register patients, and I could not see any patients on my screen, even though the ER was full. It took another 2 hours for them to fix THAT problem. Finally, by 8 pm, with over half my shift having gone by, my computer was up an running. Luckily it was a pretty mellow night (even though we did have a depressed psych patient somehow break loose from her four-point restraints and go AWOL)

I have a love/hate relationship with technology.
I love it until it breaks/ then I hate its guts!!

Knight In Shining Armour

I was having one of those crazy busy nights; all us clerks were run off our feet, when a motor-vehicle accident was brought in.

The EHS (paramedics) have their forms in triplicate, they keep the white one, the yellow goes to the nurses, and the pink goes to us admitting clerks. Some EHS are awesome at filling out the forms, getting ALL the details they can, which is such a big help; others couldn't care less, which makes life more difficult for us with STAT registrations. Of course there are just some times that the patient is so critical that they do not have time to fill anything out other than the patients name and birthday which is totally fine; this was one of those times.

After finding the patient in our database, and running off all the paperwork, I went to drop it off in the Trauma Bay. I have a section in my database where I need to fill out the accident details ( time, location, mechanism of injury ) the best way to find that out accident info if a patient is in trauma bay and surrounded by doctors and nurses is to see if I can catch one of the EHS and ask then as they are re-stocking their gurneys.

Just as there are nice people, and jerks in every profession, it is the same with paramedics. Some are understanding and helpful, others act like I am a fly on the windshield of their existence! I had the misfortune of dealing with one of the latter. This gentleman acted like I was the biggest hassle he had encountered all day...all questions I asked him were answered with one word answers, grunts or "I dunno, my partner might know".

Right before I was about the slink away feeling the size of a termite; one of the other paramedics spoke up. My knight in shinning armour was one of the veteran paramedics, who I hadn't seen leaning against the wall. He turned the jerk paradmedic and said

" Hey buddy, you be nice to the little admitting clerk, she is only trying to do her job", the other paramedic looking very shame-faced turned to me and said "I can go see if my partner has the sheet with all the info" to which I promptly replied with a smile " thats ok I can get it myself."

The veteran paramedic gave me a thumbs-up as I walked by toward trauma bay. So often us clerks are viewed as the pee-ons of the ER; people often forget that we have an important job to. We are the ones who get the correct patient in the census so tests can be ordered, and medical histories can be viewed. Not life-saving I know in the big scheme of things, yet important none the less; and the fact that someone recognized, and stood up for me that evening, left a grin on my face until I left for home that evening.

Dignity.

Seeing as the gentleman featured in this post shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday evening; let us take a minute to observe the passing of a fellow soul. That being said....

How to be assured that when you die the ER staff will not talk about you for weeks to come:
1) Do not meet a strange man over the internet, and after a few weeks of casual emailing decide to meet up for sex.

2) Do not invite him over to your basement sex "dungeon", complete with a comprehensive array of sex paraphernalia.

3) Do not start the evening off by smoking a joint, proceed to drink an *unknown amount beer, ingesting ecstasy, and topped off by stuffing cocaine and ketamine in your rectum.

4) Do not stop breathing while you are tied up in full bondage gear in the middle sex.

5) Do not have your new found *friend* fail to preform CPR for 18min while awaiting EHS because he is freaking out. Also, do not have him forget to untie you from your bondage restraints, so you are brought into the ER still all trussed up.

6) Do not pass away from Cardiac Arrest, looking like the most peaceful and happy corpse we have seen in awhile.

~ Just a friendly public service announcement~

Nonstop Night.

Crazy busy night tonight. It was STAT reg, after STAT reg.

We had some poor 20-yr-old kid brought in who was trying to repair his gas heater when it blew up in his face; he was brought in by EHS,intubated with 70% burns.
Charred flesh has a very distinct smell.
Although, on the news they had him as a 39-yr-old male; it is funny how often they get their facts wrong.

Right before I left we also had some sweet 95-yr-old lady GCS <9, brought in from a care home, who had been given an incorrect dosage of meds; poor gal.

Luckily we were fully staffed, so the load was manageable. Off to bed, so I can do it all over again tomorrow!

A Memorable Night.

Last night in the wait room together were patient's, doctors, nurses, paramedics, all watching in hushed silence Barack Obama's acceptance speech. A sense of history in the making was in the air.

Of course, as soon as it was over, the channel immediately got switched over to the hockey game. I love Canada...and I proceed to go back and deal with our favourite drug-seeking, smelly, belligerent homeless guy, whose last name "Swampy" I find very fitting.

Working the Nighshift

16 hours is a long shift, especially if working overnight.

Last Saturday, I worked my first ever night shift. I got the call from work, as I was heading out the door, that the night clerk was sick and they needed me to extend my shift, although I was hesitant I knew my bank account would thank me, so I accepted.

I came to work prepared with a large cup of tea, and a Red Bull. Everything was as per usual for my regular 3 pm to 11 pm shift. I have to admit it was sad seeing my regular collegues leave to go home at 11pm, knowing I still had another 9 hrs ahead of me, being the lone admitting clerk.

Of course I had to accept to work a shift during the daylight savings time change...so I didn't work 8 extra hours, I worked 9. There is something very depressing about watching a whole hour of work vanish right before your eyes!

For my first ever night shift, it wasn't that terrible. I like the atmosphere on nights, things usualy die down around 3 am, so you get to sit around and talk to the nurses and doctors; also time goes by fast because I always had someone to admit ( being the only clerk). I caught a quick snooze from 2-3 am, on the couches in the hallway outside of CT scan. I had first tried to sleep in the nurses lounge, but a few of them were watching "The Mummy".

By the time it reached 5 am, 7 am could not come soon enough! I was feeling very gruby ( even though I had already brushed my teeth once during the night ). My mascara was smuged, and my hair was doing its own thing, after being slept on!!

Luckily we were fairly busy from 5-7 am. I have never been so happy to see the 7 am shift relief in my life!! I called a taxi home ( there was no way I was taking a bus...I was too afraid of falling asleep and missing my stop).

My delightful boyfriend has woken up early to cook my a hearty breakfast of eggs bacon and toast, which I wolffed down, showered and then promptly fell asleep.

It was nice to know that I am capable of working 16 hours overnight with becoming a total mess, but it is not something I plan on making a routine.