June 1, 2012

The work week is over

Decided to pick up that Thursday at the agency.   I figured I'd get the working in now before classes started up again...plus the extra money will be good.  So yes, I worked 6 straight days between outpatient and agency.

Let's see what happened this week, in no particular order...

I had a rather unpleasant incident with a 5150 involving some juice.  *sigh*  Sad part was that I kind of saw it coming.   The police who were with the 5150 were far more upset about the incident than I was and would not leave me until I had the patient secured.  I can't say I was thrilled with what happened, but I got myself cleaned up, kept calm and carried on.  I also stayed as far away from the patient as I could.  Don't know if it was true psychosis or the patient not liking me, or a combination of both, but I wasn't interested in finding out.

I worked a shift on Stepdown 2.  I learned that there is a difference between Stepdown 1 and Stepdown 2, and that is that Stepdown 2 is technically for the more acute and AWOL-prone patients.  Looking at the layout of the units, I can understand why:  it's a lot more work to escape from Stepdown 2 than Stepdown 1.   Though it seems like the patient acuity is evenly spread across both units.

I'm definitely getting my stepdown legs back, and this shift went a lot better than the last time I was on a stepdown.  Most of my patients were detoxing so that was old hat.  I also had one patient who was paranoid and delusional, and after enduring 5 minutes of interrogation, protests and sarcasm, I had to very pleasantly set limits and end the conversation.  He actually wasn't too bad:  he went through berating the rest of the staff in under an hour, then spent the rest of the shift quietly watching television.

I attracted the attentions of two manic patients who apparently decided that I was a goddess on earth.  They kept staring at me, waving and making comments.  Nothing derogatory, but pretty much as heavy flirting as they could get away with.  I tuned them out as much as I could and went about my business.  Unfortunately, I kept getting them assigned to me because guess who was the only nurse who they would listen to?  Yeah.  But they responded to the limits I set every time.

That male nurse I mentioned in an earlier post continues to flirt with me, but he's pretty harmless.  As long as he stays harmless, I'm chalking him up to just being the flirtatious type.  He told me that he was happy that I had to come over to his unit so he could see me again.  I told him I'm glad he was my sane fan this week, especially after the two manic patient admirers.

And then I think I was actually the recipient of flirting by a doctor.  I was waiting in the doctor's lounge for another doctor to return, and he was sitting there working on his own stuff.  No one said anything for a minute.  Then he asked me how I was doing.

"Not too bad," I reply.  "How about you?"  Pretty standard ritual, no?

His response is to tell me how he just broke up with his girlfriend and how it's been hard for him to date right now.  I learned a lot about him in those few minutes.

Uh...ok.

I told him that I'm sure he'd find someone who was into him.  Then my own doctor returned and that was the end of that.  And that was pretty much the extent of our interaction all shift.  So this was either his attempt at flirting, or he saw me as someone who he could confide in and who could dispense sage romance advice.  Considering my forays into the dating pool ended many many years ago, I don't know what advice I could have offered him.

The doc is not bad on the eyes...actually, he's really nice on the eyes.  I'm sure he'll rebound and do just fine.

Then there were two shifts in outpatient as backup to the nurse that I usually cover for, which was really nice since I never get to work with her.  But they had a lot of admissions that week and my services were definitely needed.  Challenging, hectic, with Axis II in full bloom...must have been something in the water.  But overall it was fun.

Then another two shifts in outpatient CD.  One was in a backup capacity and was fun.  The other, I was covering for the regular day shift nurse and it was not as much fun.  That was due to the fact that I hadn't worked solo there since my orientation five months ago, so most of my frustration was due to getting used to the routine, the faces, the procedures, etc.  More Axis II but with CD so less frustrating...but man, can the patients be needy.  I couldn't go for five minutes without one coming to ask me something.

So a blissful weekend off before another week of work...and the two politics classes...begin.