Today I left work in tears.
After 12 hours of dealing with a patient in Diabetic Ketoacidosis, with blood glucose in the 800's on 35 units of insulin an hour.... with MAP's in the 40's and systolic blood pressure in the 80's....after giving 10 liters of Normal Saline. pH levels that barely reached 7.21...an improvement....by the end of my shift.
Nausea and vomiting for hours.... after giving a total of 16 mg zofran IV.... With platelets dropping to the 40's and lab draws....every...30...minutes, because the glucometer couldn't even read blood sugars that high...
Yes, today I left work in tears... because after all of that.... my pages to the resident were ignored..... after all of that my request for something...... anything.... for his blood pressure was ignored.... after all of that I was chewed out by the resident because I "broke the chain of command" by paging the fellow.
Today I left work in tears. Today I am tired and broken and weary. But today I know...without a shadow of a doubt.... I did everything I could to advocate for my patient and in the end...tears or not... at least I have that.
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Hug to you. Sounds like a miserable day. Time for a bubble bath and a good book. Take a deep breath and remember tomorrow is another day.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I always teach my students and residents to respect the nurses. I am so sorry that yup had that experience. I hope my residents never ignore ICU pages. Wow.......
ReplyDeleteI felt bad because my intern actually responded really quickly but he knew his hands were tied since his resident wasn't responding and he didn't want to get in trouble. poor guy. Apparently this particular resident has had problems before.
ReplyDeleteOh, honey. Sorry to hear this... I hope you're feeling better soon!
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