Well, nothing very interesting has been going on around here. Really boring. I'm just glad I'm off tonight. Last night was a full moon- I hate working on a full moon. It is NEVER good....lol. We started using our brand new( no telling how many million dollar ) Veri-Scan friday night. That has been very testing. It slows us way down. We have these PDA things we have to carry around ( I swear we need tool belts ) that scans everything. We have to scan each individual pill package, then scan the patient's armband.....it is REALLY time consuming! The only plus is it charts the medication for us as we give it so when we get done with our med pass, we don't have another 45 minutes of charting the meds ahead of us. BUT we have a window of one hour before or after the 'scheduled' time to give a medicine. IF it's given out of that timeframe, it's considered a med error. Well it was already pretty rare that we got everything done on 12 patients in that time frame....now this new pda thing slows us more.....and it knows if you gave it on time or not. So we are having med errors left and right. Friday and saturday night I finished giving my 8 and 9 pm meds at 11:30. PRetty much all of us got done around that time. Many say " well maybe this will get them to hire us some help when they see how it's impossible to get this done on 12 patients." I think not..........all this will do is get us preached at even more......do better, do it faster, do it now, and keep everyone happy for our patient satisfaction score. BLAH! And to add to the mess.........we had one nursing assistant last night for the 25 patients on our end of the floor. That meant I was having to stop and change diapers as I went and fluff pillows and do vital signs too while I was trying to get these meds given on time.- OF course the first thing every patient said to me when I walked in to give them one pill and get out" I need a bed change, or I need a new diaper on " Ridiculous! I don't mind at all doing any of those things when the NA's need help, but last night I pretty much had to do both jobs ALL night. IS there a nursing assistant job posted for my floor? NO. And it was a full moon, so everyone was NOT going to sleep..calling for stuff all night. One pulled out her IV, ONe pulled out her foley catheter, and one pulled out her Nasogastric tube. All had to be reinserted. The only kind of tube we didn't insert last night was a rectal tube ( yes they are real ) and we did have a doctor order one, but the patient refused- thank goodness. LOL OH! and to top it all off- during our morning med pass, we had a code blue. SO I got out about a half hour late. PHEW!!!!!!!!! MY FEET HURT! Thank goodness.....I have 7 days of time off I have to use by aug 7th..........I turned in my requests last night- monday is the deadline to request for the end of july and august. I BETTER get my time off. All these people are off having babies.........I don't care.....she can hire some staff. I better not loose any of that hard earned time off. IT will be nice. I will not work at all in august until the 11th. :o) and I will be off pretty much the last week and a half of july. :o) PErks of working my kind of schedule.......7 days of vacation time can really get you alot of days off in a row. :o) Something to look forward to. A light at the end of the tunnel........
Ok enough venting about work.........I just feel like being grouchy! ARG!