Unexpected Death

0630 and I'm in my patient's room giving pain meds. All of a sudden I hear a ton of commotion. I look out the door the realize it is next door. They called a code on the woman right next door!! They called two codes on her. Then, sadly, she didn't come out of it. I never saw this patient; however, my charge nurse was in her room and calling for the nurse. I happened to be walking by, and stopped by the door to see if he needed help. He asked if it was my patient, but when I said no he said not to worry about it. Because I was SWAMPED, I said ok. I look back now and wish I had at least asked if he was sure like I do with most things. It ended up that she needed to be suctioned but that she was stable. This was maybe 2300ish? Maybe around the time I happened to make the comment "I'm kind of in survival mode right now and will be happy at this point if I can just keep my patients alive!" Really? Ugh. Maybe it's wrong, but I'm actually happy to say the patient we lost this morning was not mine. I am completely distraught and I never even saw the patient. It definitely put a damper on the moods of the entire staff.
To make matters worse, we had to witness the family's reaction. All out loud sobs to the point other patients' family members were peering out of their doors (and one doctor) to see what was going on. Then, the patient's granddaughter started going up and down the hallways screaming. We had to call security. This was all in the middle of us trying to give report. Nobody could function. The patient was only 52. She was a postop patient that had been sent to ICU but then became stable enough to be moved to us. The lab is going to get KILLED when everything is reviewed, because they did not report a blood sugar of freakin 44!!!!!! How in Heaven's name do you allow your little fingers to type that into the computer and not pick up the phone?!?!? The cutoff point before it is ABSOLUTELY critical is 60!!! Come on now! Wake up! Her BP was a normal BP this morning at 0600, but it was low for her. All of these were signs that things were going on. The nurse may possibly have been able to pick up on the BP; my charge nurse made the point, though, that MAYBE this will make people realize our workload is simply too much. There is no way that nurse had time to even be told what the patient's vitals were. I don't know what most of mine were. We don't just complain because we don't want to work. We are trying to watch out for our patients' best interests!
Not only the safety aspect, but we also have the satisfaction to worry about as well. I got a patient up from ER at 1915 which is absolutely ridiculous and they are NOT supposed to be doing that in the first place. Along with that, ER did not bother to put in an IV that was ORDERED. So, that will be an issue that will be dealt with today. Not to mention the fact they did not bother to draw the labs that were ordered either. And what was their reason? They were too busy. Really?? Um. ER has the opportunity to make people wait. We do NOT. ER is going to be gettin freakin chewed out. Not only with my patient, but another patient was sent up yesterday without an ordered IV and another without an ordered foley. Yes, our hospital is 90 somethin % full right now, but that is flat out ridiculous. There's triage for a reason. Get your crap done.
I had three patients calling for either pain or nausea meds before I could simply get my patients assigned in the computer. Not copying the assessment or writing down my meds. Simply assigning them as my patients. Now, please tell me how I am supposed to get to every single one of them PLUS my NEW patient all at once?? Not to mention that still excludes two more patients!!! And they wonder why our patient satisfaction scores have dropped???? Maybe if they would fully STAFF us instead of freakin giving us six patients you'd see higher scores!!!!!! But NO! Instead you want to continue to make cuts, continue to make changes to decrease instead of increase patient satisfaction and make our jobs that much busier and more challenging.
At this point, It's really hard to tell if I hate my floor or I hate my hospital. Until recently, I would have said my floor. I'm truly debating right now. Whew. Now that I got all that off of me, I'm off to enjoy some breakfast and try to sleep. Kinda not feelin well after all that.