So you had a bad day at work.

 

So you got in trouble with your boss.  You pissed off a customer? You showed up late to work.  Maybe you even lost a really big client.  But when a nurse has a really bad day it’s most likely because their patient died.  It’s may sound callous but when a code comes in it’s a little easier to distance yourself from the patient.  You didn’t hold their hand or comfort them in their last moments like I did in long term care.  Though a child code will always take your breath away.  Which brings me to my bad day.  I had a female early 70’s come in due to a fall at her home.  She had a laceration to her head.  But was mainly complaining of her hip hurting.  She told me of her stories of being a nurse.  The things that she loved and the ones that she hated.  Being an ER nurse you are rushed so I really didn’t have a lot of time to really listen to her stories long.  In between vital checks, pain medication administration and positioning.  I helped clean up her laceration and all her dried blood.  We chit chatted some more.  She went to CT.  When she came back the CT tech states she was complaining of head pain.  So I went to check her pain level.  Upon arriving to the room.  She was no longer her chipper self.  She was only moaning.  I called the dr. ASAP.  Called for some back up help to my room.  She went from talking  to unresponsive.  She was tubed and moved to the trauma room.  She had a major bleed in the brain.  Nothing we could have done they say.  She won’t live they say.  That doesn’t make it all better.  You still look back and reevaluate did I spend enough time in that room?  Vitals were fine.  Did I miss something?  So the next time when you hear a nurse say they had a bad day at work.  Don’t always dismiss it as just something trivial.   When a nurse has a truly bad day it’s not always caused by some drunk running down the hall naked.