Have worked for the past three nights. For whatever reason, again, most of my patients' primary issue was bowel care. One was incontinent of stool, putting out black liquid stool every couple of hours. Patient #2 had been using narcotics for pain control, and had not had a BM in 5 days. So each night, for 3 nights, I gave him medication to make him go. He could make it to the bedside commode, but he was tall, heavy, and could barely move his left side. Patient #3 had a colonoscopy prep ordered (lots of meds, culminating in a tap water enema at 0600 the morning of the exam). He could move around pretty well, but he was confused. He woke up in the middle of the night when his hearing aid started to make this weird whistling sound (he did not remember he even owned hearing aids, so it scared the hell out of him when the whistling noise started).
I did get an admission late my last shift. It was a lady in her 70's with chest pain. It was a nice change of pace, getting to work a cardiac case. Her pain was effectively controlled after a couple of hours, with no changes in her EKG. I'm pretty sure she's gonna need her gall bladder yanked.
It's still all worth it, I say.
Posted by: Malo | October 27, 2004 at 08:09 PM