Posted on 08/29/2007 4:24:09 AM PDT by 60Gunner
Get a clue. It’s not like there’s a long line of competent, experienced and not-burned-out ER nurses waiting to take 60Gunner’s place if he quits. He quits and his hospital or another one will have one less competent and experienced ER nurse, and more people will die waiting for help.
Whatever.
At my age, the possibility of being wheeled into an emergency room grow with every passing year.
I am not attacking him because of the way he may felt on that particular day but because he put his feelings on a public forum causing a person who may become a patient to wonder if someone who is attending them at a critical time when was the last time he or she slept.
Might have to go to the doc myself, think I got something in my eye while reading.
Life can be hard, best to keep it in perspective.
Excellent work. Well done.
I don’t know why I didn’t disconnect the doorbell. I’ll do it today. I promise! Sheesh!
Gunner you write great stories....You’ve got a book in you for sure.
From one nurse to another...You are da bomb.
Nice story.
I cannot comment upon your nursing skills but have a strong suspicion they are beyond reproach. But I can comment upon your writing skills and I deem them to be excellent. Of course I am neither an accredited author nor a Holiday Inn Express sleeper but I dare anyone to disagree with that assessment. I suspect Reader's Digest will be ringing your doorbell soon ... oops, strike that last. :)
I am very glad you found that young woman and made up for your sleepy reaction. We needed that happy ending after all that came before.
PS Dare I ask about the baby's outcome?
After reading this I’ll never complain again about not getting enough sleep.
Granted, I’ve put in a lot of all-nighters (I freelance edit) but no one ever died from a missed deadline. The pressures of your line of work are enormous.
Sometimes these nights just happen. I am blessed to have an excellent wife to support me, excellent colleagues who walk the same mile in my shoes and who cry just as I do sometimes. And I have a God who sustains me and who is my ultimate healer and comforter. He fills me with joy and excitement about what I do, and blesses me in spite of myself. How can I ask for anything more?
As far as the book goes, I am saving my work and compiling it. I have not decided to create a compilation or to simply write a whole new book. Time is occupied with the preparation to become a flight nurse (Which will take another couple of years), work on a disaster management project, and simply helping out around the house. In the time left, I write.
Thanks for your encouragement.
You mean I actually influenced the outcome of this?
You’ll forgive me if I stand astonished!
Good luck to you!
Given that medical residents, who provide the great majority of direct physician-patient care at all major hospitals, are simply not allowed to sleep enough for normal mental and physical functioning, I think the last thing hospital patients need to be worried about is the NURSES not having had enough sleep. The official, but largely unenforced limit for residents is 80 hours a day with a maximum 24 consecutive hours. Virtually no residents work less than that and most work considerably more. They can’t complain or they’ll get royally screwed by their residency program director, and possibly kicked out of the program, and they can’t go work somewhere else because the patently unconstitutional resident matching system is universally used in US teaching hospitals and Congress immediately gave the system protection from antitrust laws after a court rightly ruled the whole scheme illegal. 60Gunner had probably had a lot more sleep than the resident physicians who were giving treatment orders and diagnostic interpetations in the ER.
Do not let “the big big brown eyes” interfere with your marriage! Otherwise, I can say I’ve been there, done that!
Wow. This is better stuff than those medical dramas on TV.
Probably nothing that a few days vacation couldn’t fix.
Oh, worry not. She is a lovely young woman- including her character- but nobody is pretty enough to take me away from the love of my life.
Thanks.
ping for my mom, the ER nurse, so she can read it later.
ping to save for later!
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