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July 2nd, 2009 by Ross
When I first started nursing in an emergency department I was amazed at how we treated injured toddlers.
I’m being a bit liberal with my use of the word ‘toddlers’ here, basically I mean any child between the ages of around 1 to 5 years of age.
I was amazed for a few different reasons – firstly, at just how frequently toddlers injure themselves! Fortunately most of the ‘injury presentations’ (as opposed to fevers etc) are for fairly minor things such as head lacs from running into tables, finger lacs from sharp objects, lip and facial lacs from trampolines/sports/running etc, or splinters/foreign bodies in fingers and nostrils. Of course there are much more serious things like burns or getting stuck into the parents tablets too, but management of these presentations are quite different from other injuries.
I’ve had kids myself so I know how hard it is to reason or negotiate with a 2 year old child. Basically it’s impossible! A normal conversation would go something like this “just hold out your hand, and….” at which moment the child would thrust his hand as high as possible into his jumper and cling to his parents, making sure you can’t get anywhere near the injured body part.
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June 27th, 2009 by Ross
Got a question you’d like answered? Or a topic you’d like to raise?
Feel free to scroll on down and ask it in the comment section below!
I’ve been nursing around 10 years, but believe it or not I’m also a real human! I have a life outside of work (sometimes), and am happy to ask any questions you might have about nursing, shift work, pay, Australia in general, the Dave Matthews Band (woo!), the strangest emergency presentation I’ve had or anything else at all you can think of. Here’s a bit more about me and how I got into nursing.
Take this brilliant question by Eunice for example:
“With your nursing career now, do you still have time to pursue your hobbies? (be it in IT/music..) or does this job suppress ur creative side?”
You can read my fairly ordinary reply here or come up with a question of your very own – just ask it in the comments section below.
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June 24th, 2009 by Ross
I had something rather interesting happen to me this week – I was ramped!
While ramping is not an uncommon process every day in Australia, it is one that usually annoys / frustrates and infuriates ambulance staff more than anyone else.
What is ramping?
From the health and community services union:
“Ramping occurs when patients are forced to wait on an Ambulance stretcher in a hospital corridor before being admitted into the Emergency Department.
During ramping, Ambulance Officers are unable to leave the hospital and respond to ambulance cases, and in some cases Ambulances have been “Ramped” for up to six hours at a time.”
My ramping experience occurred when I escorted a patient with a Subarachnoid Haemorrhage to another hospital, where the patient had been accepted by neurosurg. On arrival, guess what? Oh yes they had been accepted, however there was no bed – so there we stood, ramped with a heap of other ambulances in the emergency dept.
“How much fun is ramping?” I hear you ask…. Well, let me describe it to you. Continue reading… »
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June 16th, 2009 by Ross
This year’s Roy Morgan Professions Survey has named Nursing as the most ethical and honest of all professions in Australia, topping the list at 89% of those surveyed.
Interestingly enough, this is the fifteenth year in a row that Nursing has topped the list since it’s addition in 1994. This is despite the fact that the image of 23 out of 29 of the professions surveyed went down in 2009.
That’s great for nurses at least – being part of a profession that is so highly regarded by the public.
Pharmacists, doctors and teachers also consistently rank pretty high, while newspaper journalists, advertisers and car salesmen bottomed out the list at 9%, 6% and 3% respectively.
I wonder if similar figures are reflected elsewhere in the world?
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June 11th, 2009 by Ross
So today using my powers of amazing dodge-ability, I managed (by mere milliseconds) to get out of the path of a power-vomit. Not just any power vomit, this was the kind experienced only by those who have joined the ranks of the bowel-obstruction team.
As any emergency nurse would know, this normally entails such copious amounts of vomit that you begin to feel quite amazed and surprised that someone could actually fit that much in. It also smells and looks fecally, and has amazing projectile properties (all adding to the ‘excitement’, of course).
Anyway, using my amazing powers I dodged that sucker in a move that would make matrix fans proud! However, the next ten minutes happened so quickly that it left us looking around at each other saying “did that actually just happen?”.
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June 9th, 2009 by Ross
Medication errors seems to be a hot topic that is revived from time to time. Often it comes up in a slightly sensationalised form in the media, with grim statistics accompanying a photo of a busy hospital, and comments made on the negative outcomes for recipients of such errors.
Exactly how often do medication errors happen in hospitals?
Statistics paint pictures that make remarkable claims, yet it’s very difficult to validate or construct exact data on the frequency and severity of errors. For instance, according to The Australian, mistakes happen more frequently in Queensland than any other state or territory of Australia.
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June 2nd, 2009 by Ross
As any emergency nurse will tell you, sometimes it’s really difficult not to be judgmental of emergency presentations, particularly if they are self inflicted.
For example, some of the more infuriating presentations include:
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The long term smoker with chronic smoking related problems who continues to smoke heavily, and once again ends up on bipap in the middle of the night
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The pancreatitis patient who drinks heavily then presents screaming in pain
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The insanely obese patient with any number of obesity related issues who presents looking for a magic cure (note – once this patient is on a bed, they typically become completely dependent on nurses for everything, and can’t possibly exert the energy required to get off the bed for anything, especially for such mundane tasks as using the toilet)
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Drunks, alcohol related injuries or any presentation that begins with “I was completely off my face when…”
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People with chronic pain issues who have either gone through their fortnightly allocation of analgesics in one week and are looking for more, or have some shady story about not being able to get a script filled so need some opioid-based pain-killers in the middle of the night (happens more frequently than you would think!)
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May 28th, 2009 by Ross
Interacting with family and including family members is a fairly large part of nursing. I’ve come across some great, supportive family members who are really there to help and support the patient as much as they can. In saying that, there are also family members who constantly try to push the boundaries, and really have to be seen to be believed.
Sometimes these are family members who are loud, obnoxious or belligerent. Other times they are indignant, mocking and even scolding of the nursing staff. Obviously you have to factor in that there is a large anxiety component, and some people unintentionally vocalize their stress, but there is really no excuse for blatant rude behaviour.
Some recent examples of family members pushing the boundaries include:
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May 26th, 2009 by Ross
So today one of the nursing student’s was slapped in the face by a grumpy old man.
Yes he was confused, angry at the world and lacking insight… and also just down and out rude.
“Get out of the way or I’ll kick you in the head” he pleasantly replied to the nurse’s greeting in the morning.
The guy is a nursing home patient with poor social skills, anger management issues, and paranoid tendencies which lead him to distrust most people around him.
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May 24th, 2009 by Ross
I’ve known for a long time that nurses are odd characters. However, when you’re part of that world, it all seems to feel a little… normal!
I came across a great article this week that looks at things from another perspective: being a partner of a nurse. Interesting – I guess I really haven’t thought about how strange nurses can seem to people outside the profession.
I mean, only a nurse can understand the ‘normality’ of casual discussions on grotesque / bizarre hospital presentations, surviving on little or no sleep, working back to back shifts in a near delirious state, and the curious art of 10+ straight hours of bladder control. These things are second nature to a nurse, and we understand each other pretty well… But to an outsider?
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