hypocaffeinemia

I just ran across a blog entitled Adventures in Cardiology. It details the experiences, from the husband’s viewpoint, of a cardiac nurse undergoing RF ablation for atrial fib.

It is, simply put, a must read for anyone who truly cares about patients. Pam’s experiences can fill a textbook in what NOT to do from both a medical and nursing standpoint.

Thanks, Dan and Pam, for being courageous enough to write about your experience. I hope things are now going well for you both.

As for me, I think that I have learned much by seeing this unique and unfortunate viewpoint.

I’m hoping this will end well.

Last weekend at work, some coworkers were discussing various viewpoints of Christianity. This is a subject I tread lightly on– My hospital is religiously affiliated and I’m not fond of burning bridges.

Somewhere in the conversation, Calvinism got brought up. Now, even when I was Christian, I held Calvinism in low esteem. Its central tenets are downright loony, in my not so humble opinion, so I had to argue against it vociferously. In the interest of full disclosure, I let slip that I was an atheist. Now mind you, I wasn’t arguing against Christianity in general, just the Calvinist take on it. Anyways, my coworker was rather dumbstruck by this, and has now set out on a course to (I guess) convert me.

To date, she has provided me with a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, pointing out that “Lewis was an atheist, too”. It left me thoroughly unimpressed and the critique I wrote back to her probably won’t sit well. I was honest in my distaste for Lewis’s views on universal morality and his false trilemma, so I’m wondering where this will go next.

If past history is any indication, I will likely be crossed with Antony Flew, Lee Strobel, and others of their ilk in the coming weeks.

As long as it stays friendly, I’m game.

Despite the budget tightening at my facility, management has apparently found room enough to belittle its staff by purchasing a Talk LIGHT™ Too noise detector for the ICU nursing station. Here’s a picture of it:

...but does it also make us walk in single-file lines?

I sent my boss an ultimatum yesterday. I told her I needed an offer in writing by March 1st or else I would have to accept a position elsewhere.

I think it went well. Time will tell, I guess. She called me yesterday evening and pretty much guaranteed me a position come May, but wasn’t prepared to make any formal offer yet.

I will still be applying to other local internship programs just in case, and perhaps more importantly to gauge offers. I have a feeling the market rate around here is a bit higher than what I will be offered at my current facility.
We shall see.

As I approach the conclusion of this educational chapter, I am beginning to keep an eye out for various internship programs at participating hospitals. I’m in Houston, so it’s not like there’s a shortage of hospitals, however, there may be a shortage of programs due to the economic downturn.

My preferred internship would be at my own hospital in my own ICU. Unfortunately, nothing formal is established as of this moment. My director assures me she will be creating an internship “just for me”. Problem is, such a decision is likely out of her hands and due to the nature of her job, I have about the same amount of faith as I do a politician’s promises.

Not helping matters, my hospital has recently endured a hiring freeze coinciding with the search for a new CEO and a new CNO. We have a new CNO now — one that nobody knows anything about, mind you — but at least there’s progress on that front. However, the ICU unit-based educator has recently stepped down primarily due to a lack of hours for her to devote to education (she’s also a floor nurse), and this appears to be a pattern throughout the facility.

So we have a hiring freeze, unknown unknowns calling the shots, and a lack of an educator to establish a formalized internship program standing in my way.

Needless to say, I’m looking into a plan B. Also looking at plans C, D, and E.

Okay, I lied. 

I actually don’t have much of a parable to share, just random venting. Our soap dispenser in the one sink inside the ICU nursing station was finally replaced this week. It had been broken for the past two months. Why did it take this long to fix? Nobody knows, but it’s beside the point.

The irony, as any of my peers in this zany industry can empathize with, is our hospital’s fervent hand-washing hysteria coinciding. Sure, they gave us a temporary bottle dispenser. It doesn’t help to quell the pain. We can afford hand-washing secret shoppers (I dare not speak what we call them in reality), but we can’t afford to fix the soap dispenser. 

Le sigh.

My hospital is currently in the midst of a large expansion. We’re going from podunk community hospital to ginormous regional medical center. It’s quite the transition, and watching the construction up close is both fascinating and inspiring.

However, in the last several months both our Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) and CEO have resigned due to the tried and true cliche of “Accepting a better job somewhere else due to closeness of family and/or new opportunities AKA Cash money, bitches!”

It could be pure coincidence that two of our top administrators– two that have been here from day one, mind you– have elected to pack up and leave in the midst of our hospital’s biggest project to date.

Or it could be something much worse.

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My hospital just activated emergency staffing due to Hurricane Gustav. I’m “E1″, which means “first shift” of the disaster.

What this means is that I’ll be blogging to you live from the hospital as I sleepover Monday night and work Tuesday. Fun.

For years, I’ve opted to take the stairs whenever possible at work. It’s often faster than waiting for the elevator, and it saves electricity as well as prevents an elevator from being tied up by one guy carrying nothing. My old hospital in the Dallas area even encouraged stair use for this very reason- it was an older facility without many elevators.

However, my current facility has another view. The entrances to each floor excepting the first are badge-access controlled in every staircase. That’s a reasonable security measure, except our badges don’t give us access to enter our floor (or any other). This means we can go downstairs perfectly fine (I’m sure they’d put a badge acccess point on the first floor too if it weren’t a fire code violation), but we can’t go upstairs.

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First, a disclaimer: I’m not territorial to the point where every little thing turns into a bitter rivalry between various hospital departments. I understand and appreciate the need for those who go into areas like med/surg or LTC while simultaneously acknowledging there’s no way in hell you’d ever get me to work there.

Now that I said that, I feel I need to talk about *some* of the med/surg nurses I’ve had to communicate with as a monitor tech.

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