Hospital Roulette
A patient was discharged and a nurse, who needed the IV pole for another patient, noticed several bags of IV fluid hanging from the pole. Curious, she started reading the labels and found that the bags were for three different patients. There's no way to know if the last patient got the previous patients meds or exactly what happened. Scariest of all is that we re-use the IV tubing. If the patient did get another patient' s IV, they also got the tubing and so may have been contaminated with someone else's blood. One of the previous patients did have a nasty contagious disease. If I ever get sick and need to be hospitalized, please shoot me instead.
During report, the nurse told us that one of the patients was discharged and was walking out right now. Following her eyes, I turned and saw the patient, looking like death on a cracker, being wheeled out on a gurney. I guess the term walking means something different to her.
I overheard an interesting discussion between a nurse and patient. The nurse thought that he was complaining about a sharp pain and was trying to determine where the pain was. The patient was talking about a Sharpei, a dog. I could have intervened, but I was having too much fun listening to the quarrel.
Written by Melissa on 9:51 AM
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Melissa blogging from sunny Santa Clarita, Southern California, United States.
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4 Comments:
There is no excuse for having 3 peoples IV bags on 1 pole. A private room can help to prevent this. As a patient, it's good idea to ask the nurse what she is hanging, look at the label yourself to make sure your name is on it, and look at the machine to see what the rate of infusion is, in the hospital setting setting it is rarely over 150, (outpatient infusion we can go up to 350 or so).
As for the language problem...if the job didn't suck we wouldn't have to import nurses from third world countries with poor english skills to do the job. They will work inhumane hours in dangerous conditions on little sleep so they can work 2 jobs totalling 6 shifts a week that are over 12 hours each (not counting the mandatory overtime) so they can send the money back to the phillipines.
And don't even get me started on how managed care helped to create this situation!
I need to take my sharp pain for a walk. My sharp pain is hungry. Can you make my sharp pain stop humping my leg?
Oh my. It really sounds like being a patient can be quite precarious.
The story about the Sharpei is funny, though :-)
Sarah, why don't you tell us how you really feel? :)
R2Ks, that's funny because I've been having this nagging Sharpei in my back lately.
Karen, I hope that your medical system is better than ours.
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