If you are going to brag to the house supervisor about all your previous hardcore ICU nursing experience and that you can easily handle floating to the ICU for the day...
...and then you feel it necessary to brag about all your previous hardcore ICU nursing experience to any ICU staff member who is (un)fortunate enough to be within earshot...
...and you're subsequently assigned a new admit from the ED sent to the ICU for sepsis with suspected peritoneal fistulas...
...and then you insert a foley catheter and get immediate return of 5200 ml of bloody, purulent "urine"...
...you should probably call the physician immediately (0730) rather than waiting until lunch time (1200) to brag about fixing your patient's distended abdomen by simply inserting a foley...
Because then your patient could have been rushed to emergency surgery at 0730 and you would have looked like you saved the patient's life with some timely critical thinking skills...
...rather than looking like a total farking idiot in front of the physician, surgeon, house supervisor, ICU staff, and patient family as the patient gets hustled off to surgery 5 hours later.
Oh yeah, and you probably wouldn't have gotten written up and pretty much banned from the ICU either.
But hey, what do I know, I'm just an extern.
Woah...the most I've ever gotten was 3000cc of urine from an alcoholic with a bladder problem. I've never had someone THANK me for doing a straight-cath before. She was almost CRYING thanking me for "fixing her bladder". 1. Didn't fix it, just let her pee 2. most of the WORK was done by the ACTUAL nurse, since the patient was a bit...um...out of it.
ReplyDeleteOuch.
ReplyDeleteI love love love this advice!
ReplyDeleteHope you all had a great 4th!!