Began the shift with a new area today and was catching up on the caseload. We were covering a side room for another area and I wasted about 15 minutes trying to find the keys for the drug locker. The morning was frustrating as here I was on the penultimate shift as a student on the ward trying to take some inroads in the patient management and yet again I was being delayed by needless work.
The bay was busy, especially when I was covering the lunch break. I was aware there are two patients who seem to see me attending to a buzzer shout to one patient then make a request exactly the same as the one which the other patient would have made. I.e. one patient wants the commode, so another one does. It was rather annoying, especially as there was one who was pressing the buzzer while I was stood in the bay which caused me to walk out the bay in the totally wrong direction for me to have to see where the buzzer was going off (as you can imagine you never really think a new call will come in via buzzer alert in a bay where you are already in, and when a small illuminated button next to the bed on the reset button is all there is to alert you it's not the first thing I look for).
I find this very annoying as I was wasting time left right and centre by having to do actions which were not needed. Yes, I am aware there are some patient who may not get the buzzer idea but I actually sat down and explained in plain English how and when to use the buzzer. I don't know.
Did another transfusion on one of my caseload. This went well save for the cannula which kept on stopping the flow. The flow returned by pressing slightly down and back on the cap of the cannula. Not sure why but after today I was in no mood to argue. I had a patient go AWOL for 2 hours, though not as bad as the bay next door where the patient stole money and then absconded from the ward. The police are still searching for them.
Some of this evening was spent minding a patient with dementia who was making a good go of trying to beat me up. Few near misses but nothing serious. Tomorrow dawns as my last day on placement 5.
2 comments:
Hi Nursing Student!
You ward sounds like mine. For the longest time I wa walking around with 2 broken fingers because a patient with dementia got me. They may be little and cute and old but man can they be strong!
When you were infusing your blood what size venflon did you use? That can make a big difference. It sounds like your patients venflon was slightly bent are kinked though. You can do some amazing things with micropore if that happens. I usually end up taping it the way I was trying to hold it so that stuff can infuse.
I must have my morning coffee. Catch yeah later.
Hi Anne,
The venflon was a size twenty. Not the ideal size for a transfusion but it was a little old lady who had bad veins to start off with so while I would opt for a green 18 guage the 20 was the best size the worked. I piled loads of my micropore tape on and it (sort of) worked. Still, it worked and seing as I have had equipment go horrendously wrong while on placement I was happy to settle for a "well, its not occluding fully so I'm going to leave i and walk away slowly..." approach. I worked.
As for the old folks with dementia, I would rather go hea to head with an 18 stone hells angel in amood becuase you know that after 5 minute of nodding sweetly he will run out of steam. The dementia ones will quite happily stove your head in all day.
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