Snail Paced Sunday

8th February (Sunday) - *sings* Beautiful Sunday... A total of six patients, with three nurses working. One TL, one med, and me, who runs around the ward. Neat right?  Meh, not really.

Even through there are six patients, I feel like I'm running after ten. Reason? Four out of six kept calling with the call bell. Once I assured a lady that we do not charge for pressing the call bell (she pressed a grand total of 4 times), I helped her shift from bed to chair since her daughter is worried that she doesn't know how to handle her. She told me that her mother ate two WHOLE bowls of porridge, but I assured her, it's okay. As long as she's not vomiting and taking something light after op day, she should be okay. Since she's out of the drip, she should be eating and drinking like normal. Okay, settled.
Second patient, whom everybody labelled as crazy, she often call for a lot of funny things, like she already stopped the drip, and then said, "You're too slow. I already clamped the drip." Or, early in the morning, when everyone is doing the bed, "I called three times, and nobody came. I wanted you to make me a cup of milo." The funny thing, the table was in front of her, and the milo, she already made it, and DRANK IT. The nurse (I was in afternoon shift on that day) said she don't know whether she wants to hammer her (cartoon style) or laugh or stay speechless, In the end, she just shrugged and say okay, just call if you need help. On the matter of this subject, I would like to point out, there are certain times where the nurses will be unable to attend to you. Back in the old hospital where I was trained, let's say there are 4 parts, so 1 nurse will take 1 part. And she has to handle everything. Meds, hygeine, meals, vital signs (usually we help do all together, but I mean the abnormalities), dressings... Everything.  In the mornings, reports, of course and everyone will be doing bed-making, and then at 11 - 12, all of us will be preparing medicines for noon. So nobody will be around to attend to the patient. And then, 2 - 3, noon shift report taking. 7- 8, medicines. At 9 - 10, report taking once more. So yeah, if you noticed, certain time are what you call our peak hours. I wish patients can understand that, instead of going, "I called so many times and nobody attend to me." We don't ignore your calls, it's just that sometimes we are at our peak hours and unable to attend. What about during emergency? I remember when we were performing resuscitation this patient was screaming bloody murder until one of the nurse lost her temper and said, "We are having an emergency here, could you please WAIT?" Then she kept quiet.
I don't know how she is around other nurses, but with me, she's very nice and even shared me the story of how she got admitted. I asked her to walk around and she does. She's much better compared to how I first met her, she basically now wants to go home. The only thing that irks the other girls (she didn't mention this to me) is she wants the CBD to be removed, but we just can't, since prof never say anything about removing it. The reply she gave us, "If you all don't remove it, then I will." !!!!! Is she serious??? I hope not.
Next patient, our regular patient with her pethidines. Issue : We are running low on pethidine. And pharmacy won't supply until Thursday, which means we are all running around other wards to standby the pethidines for her.
Last one, a baby. Her parents will call to measure her pampers, that's fine. but the most annoying thing was, they kept disconnecting the drip over and over again, to the point where I think I disconnect and connect about more than 5 times, each time they change pampers and once a shower. For God sake, don't they know disconnecting and connecting drips can actually bring about contamination? Because of that, the drip was basically half in by the time my shift ends. Urgh. The bright side? From the day she was admitted, no one was able to collect her stool for C+S, but at 2045 hours, I proudly managed to scrape a decent amount form the pampers. It wasn't much, but just nice. Yeah. ^^
That's it for today. Counting down to new year now.