I'll see you in the ICU!

First Clinical Day

WHAT.
A.
Nightmare!

Let me say this--I've never seen anything like it.
New York completely sucks.

For a week now, they've been pounding us with "Pressure Ulcer" talk (that's the new euphemism for Bed Sore) How to recognize them, how to treat them, how to do this how to do that...I finally couldn't take it any more and yesterday, in skills lab, I said "excuse me, but all this talk about pressure ulcers...should they NOT be happening? I have never seen one and was under the impression that in this day and age they are a thing of the past"

The reply was "oh, you'll see them, you'll see a lot of them"

???

After today, I can see why.

I don't mean to undermine ANY nurses, anywhere. But I will say this--California has got some of the best health care in the world!

I'm going to try to talk about today without violating the HIPPA.
Today, since I am fluent in Spanish, and this being Harlem, they assigned me and my partners to an elderly lady who spoke no English. She told me that she didn't know what they were going to do to her, that she had been on clear fluids because of some procedure they were going to do to her, when, she didn't know, and since she was immobile she couldn't get up to use the bathroom so she had been laying in her urine drenched sheets until one a.m. when someone finally came to change her sheets and bathe her.

Granted, she was probably an extreme case, but I also overheard a couple of nurses fighting about "attitude" and the way one had addressed the other (I had been trying to get either of their attention to see where things were kept, what the codes to the clean utility room/med room were, etc but decided they were not going to be done any time soon, so I moved on and found someone else) and another student told me about a nurse that was saying something to another about a patient and the other's response was "not MY patient" until she saw the horrified look on the student's face and added "...but I'll do it anyway--heh heh."

Outrageous.
Please, if I get hit by a taxi on the street, or something, PLEASE fly my ass back home!!!

Where nurses seem to care!

This hospital is whack, and I bet this isn't even as bad as it gets.
The look on the other student's faces made me tell them "it's not this bad, and it's not always going to be this bad, don't worry"

I was glad I had voluteered at UCSF 11 Long, because I immediately jumped in and asked around until I found the codes to the locked rooms (that our preceptor didn't even know or seem to care to find out, so she just gave us the "tour" by making us stand around the closed door, all of us looking at it and hearing what inaccessible items were on the inside) I found the unit clerk, who actually rolled her eyes at me when I asked her for the number to call laundry for more bed linens when I noticed they were all out--"They ain't gonna come!" she said to me, snapping her gum, and continuing to pick her acrylic nails. Which is better than the last time I had approached her with a question, while she was trying to add 4 or 5 four-digit numbers and just froze with a look of murder on her face, and didn't look up at me but rather ignored me as if she was going to kill me if she looked up at me.

Fuck New Yorkers.
Some of them are cool, but the ones in health care seem to be burned out and bitter.
I know it would burn one out to be in a hopeless situation where one is overworked, and understaffed. But shit. I'd never let anyone I love go there for treatment. There are plenty of other jobs you could be doing, and if taking care of people isn't something you feel strongly about, then you just shouldn't do it. The clincher was when this patient asked me to call her granddaughter, who lives with her, and I had to play detective to figure out how to get the phone to work--the operator told me no one had set up her phone, so she didn't have any service, that I'd have to call from another phone. So I went out to the nurses' staion to make the call--no one is talking to one another, they all look like they hate each other and just want to get thru the day without anyone talking to them--how do you use the phone? Do I have to dial 9 to get an outside line? Are we in the 212 area code? The only thing anyone told me was that I'd have to tell the patient's nurse, who would then contact a social worker, who would then contact the grand daughter.

I called her.

And she came--she worked on the third floor of that same hopspital. As soon as she saw her grand daughter, she burst into tears about the neglect. Poor thing. All I kept thinking is "God, this is going to be me, with no one to call, no way to fend for myself--this poor thing."

And I hope I never lose this compassion. But, also, I realized something equally important: If I have to crawl my broken body home to get decent care, I'll do it.

posted by sketchmonkey @ 4:02 PM