Some vs All Nights

Recently I have been having second thoughts about my career choice…actually to be truthful…they go a little more like… “What in the world was I thinking???!!! Why did I ever become a nurse???!!! AGHHHH!!!!”
Some nights, I wonder why I was ever foolish enough to become a nurse… Some nights I wish I would have become a doctor so I didn’t have to deal with all the craziness…Some nights I know that I made the biggest mistake of my life…Some days I dread the afternoon, because I know it means I have to spend another night at work and be a part of the crazy.
I arrived on the floor ready to have another night of caring for my patients. I knew it would be the usual busy…I just didn’t expect it to be outrageously hectic. I was already tired as working the night shift really messes up a person’s body and sleep schedule.
As I was receiving report, I noticed that one of my pts was not doing well and had deteriorated quite a bit from the night before. The pt was on 7 liters of oxygen via nasal cannula (which is not a good thing, since 6 liters is the maximum that a nasal cannula should be set at) and only having oxygen saturation of 85-89%. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the pt was also having a rough time coughing up mucus plugs. In other words, this particular patient was not doing very well at all.
For a brief second, I had a freak out moment… “I have no idea of what to do…my pt is going to die on me and I still don’t know what to do…WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!!!???” Now when I say brief…I mean very brief…I took a deep breath and collected myself.
And I did the only thing I knew to do…
I went and found a more experienced nurse and begged for some of their very valuable insight.
After I explained the situation, the other nurse amusingly raised her eyebrows at me… “Oh gosh, I thought…here it comes…she’s totally going to make fun of me…because I should know what to do…She’s thinking I’m a complete idiot”. As I waited for the taunting to commence, she quietly advised that I call the doctors and also Rapid Response so they would have a “heads up” on the patient’s condition. “Oh yeah…what a novel idea…why didn’t I think of that in the beginning!!!!”
As I was calling the pt’s medical team, a different set of doctors showed up…they were called in to consult on the case…(sometimes I swear pts have more doctors than they know what to do with)…
They began to question me about the pt and why she was still on a nasal cannula…
“um…I guess that would be…because I just got here and that’s how she got handed to me and um…I don’t know what to do” is what was running through my head…but heaven forbid I say that out loud to a team of doctors…wouldn’t want them to get the wrong idea and have them think they are smarter than me ;)
They suggested that we change the nasal cannula to a face mask to increase the oxygen getting to the pt…I went to grab the face mask…but of course I had to find all the equipment necessary first. I finally made it back to the pt’s room, only to hear the doctors change their minds about the face mask (of course they would)…instead they wanted to try something else. A little frustrated, I only smiled and went off to follow the new orders…and of course to call Rapid Response.
Within 5-10 minutes Rapid had arrived on the floor and once again I found myself giving report on the pt. They decided the patient ABSOLUTELY had to be moved to a different floor, where more adequate monitoring could be done. However, that’s not as easy done as said…after 2 or 3 more hours…I finally was able to transfer the pt off of the unit and the night finally slowed down for the most part.
Some nights I sure don’t want to be in the hospital…and DEFINITELY would rather be at home or hanging with friends…Some nights I hate my job…Some nights I get so frustrated…but I would never trade my job for all the nights in the world.