There is a million dollar question that seems to hang in the air on my unit…How in the world did I end up working in a psychiatric hospital and not know it…Did I sign myself up for this?” Apparently the answer is…um…yeah…Duh!!!!
Working on a med-surge unit is just asking for a crazy busy night…however when there is a full moon that craziness and busyness takes on a whole new meaning. Believe me when I say…”It really is true that full moons make the craziest night in a hospital”. I don’t know why or what makes it happen but it is inevitable.
Tonight, I got a new admission. I was already tired because the shift had been plenty busy…but that doesn’t really make much of a difference. So I grabbed my paperwork (I thought I was going to be efficient and get my paperwork and assessment done all at once) and entered the patient’s room.
As I entered the room, I quickly saw this was going to be an extremely tough patient. She was lying in the bed screaming…”Don’t let them get me…they can’t have me…get away from me!!!” In addition there was a lot of inappropriate and explicit language being yelled in my direction. I took a deep breath and walked closer, wishing the whole time, I didn’t really have to.
The pt was in a lot of pain…with no pain medication ordered (why does that not surprise me)…I paged the doctors, but to no avail. Finally one of the doctors called back and informed me they were not going to give any pain meds because of concerns of mental issues. I so badly wanted to tell the doctor… “Fine…then you can come care for the patient all night since you will not give adequate pain control!!”…but I held my tongue and decided I would do everything I could to help the pt.
I re-entered the room hoping to get my pt profile and paperwork done…however the pt had other ideas. The pt was sitting up in bed, screaming and crazy out of the head. The pt was attempting to throw the stuff in the room and herself out of the bed onto the ground, with every movement creating more and more unbearable pain, causing the craziness to escalate even more. I knew I had to protect the pt from harm. I called for a nursing tech to come help me…and ran to keep the pt from harming itself.
As I got within arm reach of the pt, I bent over the bed to help move the pt back onto the bed…but before I could get to the pt…the pt grabbed ahold of my arm…
I have absolutely no idea where the pt was getting her insane strength from…but I seriously thought my arm was going to be broken. Just as the tech was arriving in the room…the pt had gotten my arm in between the bed frame and her body. However the tech and I were able to wrestle my arm away from the pt.
Of course for the rest of the night…I made sure to stay a safe distance away as much as I could. Finally the doctors ordered some pain meds and the pt was able to calm down enough to get some sleep and allow the rest of the night to be uneventful.
I definitely feel like I work in a psych hospital…but then again I WAS warned in school… “There are psych patients everywhere”.
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