Dumped On Again

Day shift dumped on us again. The patient was supposed to get a laxative suppository at 10 am. They, once again, waited until 2:30 pm to give it. That left us, once again, to deal with the consequences. Because the patient is bedbound and incontinent plus not having "gone" since last Tuesday, the consequences were nasty.

I ordered a pineapple, jalapeno pepper pizza tonight. They wanted to know if it was okay if they put tomato sauce on it. Isn't that like asking if I wanted a crust and cheese? Politely, I answered yes, but inside I was screaming, "Are you out of your mind?"

A patient was discharged and walking toward the exit when he asked if he could have a hospital bed. We get this all of the time. The patients are here several days, a discharge planner visits every patient and talks about what equipment the patient will need at home and when necessary, makes the rental arrangements. So, why is it that at night when the discharge planner is gone, do the discharged patients suddenly realize that they want a bed or other major piece of equipment? Do they think that we stock this stuff and can just hand them a bed on the way out? This just drives us crazy.

Saturday is when men with power tools injure themselves. So, it being a Saturday, we got a patient who shot himself in the wrist with a nail gun. He's lucky that it missed the arteries. He was too groggy from the procedure to remove the nail from the wrist bone, so we couldn't ask him how it happened, but it doesn't really matter. It's Saturday, he's a man and he has a power tool.

Lastly, we had a patient who thought that the Mexican Mafia was after her. She thought, also, that we put something in the foot of her bed to make her feet burn. Damn. She's on to us.