My Reckoning

With Monday bringing another shift, I naturally slept in till 6:05. This is a problem as I am supposed to leave the house at 6:10. However, I managed to make my bus, and was even lucky enough to get a connecting bus which randomly arrived at 6:50 from where I have to change, so while I was initially thinking "here comes a crap day" it actually turned out rather well. So, by rather well please read "the hospital failed to explode". The ward was heavy, mainly because the lunatics had taken over the asylum, but then fell ill and had gone to the MAU. Which of course means that somebody with falls, confusion and dementia/other problem should be considered to be sent to the Diabetic/infectious disease ward in the endocrinology division. Oh, hand on, no they fucking don't but you try telling them lot that because somebody seems that they should. That's mainly what we had, which would be great but there were 21 patients out of 31 who had either had or was at risk, of falls. This, is not safe. It is an easy criticism to make of the nurses that patients fall, but this was too many. While there were howls of protest from the staff and the ward managers, there was nothing which any other ward was prepared to do to help us out. There was as a percentage 67.74% patients who had previously has falls. That, is not a good percentage of falls risks. While we know there have been cuts, this is where the chronic shortages are expressed the most, at the times of crisis where things go wrong.

My bay was not too bad. There was a few basic tasks to be done with the bed baths, bed changes, a discharge to sort out and a few BM's to do. I had every intention of setting off to do the observations first thing...only to find that there was no cuff on the dynamap. Lucky for me, this was no problem as fresh from having it on stand by while on a first aid duty with St John Ambulance on Saturday, my sphyg and stethoscope were taken out and given a hammering. Speaking of saturday, my St John ambulance duty was nice. 5 hours (9am-2pm) covering a 24 hour relay walk at a local rugby club with two first aiders and one Ambulance aid, which was unusualy in that while there was one public minor injury, I ended up with a sore backside from sitting on the cold wooden floor of the stand. If only the ward was like that.

After the doctors handover I was able to get to grips with the social workers referrals and faxed a few forms over to different places which took me nicely up to being at lunch. When I returned, there was a new admission (who did not have falls), which killed a bit of time, then I had a blood transfusion to do. So, with all that in place, using only my stethoscope, sphyg, a thermometer and my bare hands, all the relevant obs were done at the required intervals. With which, I then went home.

Then when I tested my BP at home, this came out at 150/100mmHg. Three times. This is not good. That's what it does to you.