I am happy to relate that I have a great new job - working from home for a large insurance company. Not as dull as that might sound. I have interesting work, no commute and lots of support and friendship from other staff working at home. Great set up.
I do not miss the sucky hospital at all.
I am getting some chickens (3 or 4) in the Spring - they will be free range and have a little hen house.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Sunday, October 28, 2007
O Happy Day
Quit the sucky job at the small sucky hospital - stayed a whole 3 months.
It was SO dysfunctional - Nursing was run by people whose philosophy was to determinedly stay 15 years behind the times and never change anything EVER!! Because that would be a bad thing. Also if you weren't born and raised here on Walton's mountain you were EVIL!! I decided to leave them to it. They hated me because I pointed out inefficiencies and suggested restructuring Nursing. That went down well....
My boss (CNO) was canned a few weeks ago when Corporate finally wised up.
Latest news is the CEO has been canned too - finally... What a worthless individual - showed no interest in anything - wandered around aimlessly all day and left at 330pm. EVERY day. I think the logic there was - lets see - I can do NOTHING and make $150,000 a year - OR - I can work hard and make $150,000 a year. Door number 1!! Now he will undoubtedly go off to another hospital somewhere and pull the same crap until their Corporate notices.
However I am having a great time being off work - made a huge venison curry for a bunch of hungry deer hunters, followed by a sumptuous chocolate truffle chart.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/237198
Made pizza from scratch for SW (husband) and I tonight - goat cheese, spinach and bacon - tomato sauce base - home made also...Can highly recommend King Arthur Flour Pizza blend.
Read the whole of Head Nurse blog - superb. Jo cracks me up. Wish she worked with me at the sucky little mountain hospital - we would have cleaned it out!
http://head-nurse.blogspot.com/
It was SO dysfunctional - Nursing was run by people whose philosophy was to determinedly stay 15 years behind the times and never change anything EVER!! Because that would be a bad thing. Also if you weren't born and raised here on Walton's mountain you were EVIL!! I decided to leave them to it. They hated me because I pointed out inefficiencies and suggested restructuring Nursing. That went down well....
My boss (CNO) was canned a few weeks ago when Corporate finally wised up.
Latest news is the CEO has been canned too - finally... What a worthless individual - showed no interest in anything - wandered around aimlessly all day and left at 330pm. EVERY day. I think the logic there was - lets see - I can do NOTHING and make $150,000 a year - OR - I can work hard and make $150,000 a year. Door number 1!! Now he will undoubtedly go off to another hospital somewhere and pull the same crap until their Corporate notices.
However I am having a great time being off work - made a huge venison curry for a bunch of hungry deer hunters, followed by a sumptuous chocolate truffle chart.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/237198
Made pizza from scratch for SW (husband) and I tonight - goat cheese, spinach and bacon - tomato sauce base - home made also...Can highly recommend King Arthur Flour Pizza blend.
Read the whole of Head Nurse blog - superb. Jo cracks me up. Wish she worked with me at the sucky little mountain hospital - we would have cleaned it out!
http://head-nurse.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 8, 2007
Why are you here?
While making rounds I was trying to decide which patients were in the hospital due to their own fault. Lets see- the incoherent confused old man with DTs due to excessive ETOH? The several COPD'ers who smoked like chimneys? (one still does - why we have someone in the hospital on breathing treatments and O2 yet allow them to go out to smoke is beyond me) ATV accident resulting in fx ribs and collapsed lung but no insurance? So if you can afford an ATV to mess around on - maybe you can afford those health insurance premiums? Non compliant diabetics with all kinds of problems due to non compliance? 400lb + obese with multiple health problems all related to obesity?
So really the only one not at fault would be the small baby with RSV. Once again no insurance of course, but they do have 5 kids under 5yrs of age. Maybe a few less kids and a few more insurance premiums?
Anyway I have decided this life is not for me. I have resigned so am working out my notice. Working in hospitals these days sucks - if they are badly managed and dysfunctional like this one - its pure hell. Ever onward.... have started applying for new jobs already!!
The nurses here are mostly nice although somewhat whiny and disagreeable at times. Everyone has their own personal agenda it seems. When I trained in UK in the 70s it was all about the patients. It has changed there as well. Are we all lazy and self centered now? I dont think I am - I just can't function in an environment that is so ghastly and inefficient when I am not in a position to change anything. This hospital will not survive in the current healthcare environment if some huge changes are not made very quickly. It is already floundering but they resent anyone new coming in and pointing out that they are out of date and there is more than one way to do something. Anything I changed was promptly switched back with no reason given. Except once when I was told that a secretary "didnt want to" do something I had assigned her. Yeah thats a good reason to dump a clerical function back onto nursing. Now she can sit in the cafeteria for even longer!! BUH BYE!!
So really the only one not at fault would be the small baby with RSV. Once again no insurance of course, but they do have 5 kids under 5yrs of age. Maybe a few less kids and a few more insurance premiums?
Anyway I have decided this life is not for me. I have resigned so am working out my notice. Working in hospitals these days sucks - if they are badly managed and dysfunctional like this one - its pure hell. Ever onward.... have started applying for new jobs already!!
The nurses here are mostly nice although somewhat whiny and disagreeable at times. Everyone has their own personal agenda it seems. When I trained in UK in the 70s it was all about the patients. It has changed there as well. Are we all lazy and self centered now? I dont think I am - I just can't function in an environment that is so ghastly and inefficient when I am not in a position to change anything. This hospital will not survive in the current healthcare environment if some huge changes are not made very quickly. It is already floundering but they resent anyone new coming in and pointing out that they are out of date and there is more than one way to do something. Anything I changed was promptly switched back with no reason given. Except once when I was told that a secretary "didnt want to" do something I had assigned her. Yeah thats a good reason to dump a clerical function back onto nursing. Now she can sit in the cafeteria for even longer!! BUH BYE!!
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Rescue Rangers
Today was Saturday - my husband and I went for a hike. Huge mistake. This was supposed to be my R&R after working 12 hour days all week (staffing shortages etc). So off we go to a local trail with a waterfall at the top. A lovely cool, sunny day - perfect for a nice long walk in the countryside. Half way up we encounter a young lady running down the trail. She asks us for a working cell phone. Cell reception is very poor in the mountains. We didnt have a phone with us anyway. She said, "There is a woman up there who has fallen and can't move." Oh great. We keep on going and find a largeish lady lying on her side on a heap of wicked looking branches at the bottom of the waterfall, half in the water. She had hiked up - ALONE - and then for reasons best known to herself had tried to walk ACROSS the top of the running waterfall - the rocks were smooth, slick and mossy - over she went - and fell a good 50 feet. Her head was bloody and brusied but she was conscious. I was hoping she wasn't impaled on a branch anywhere and luckily she wasnt. She was really unable to move and probably shouldn't be trying anyway. I did get her to wiggle her toes and move her hands though. We stayed with her - me sitting half in the COLD water with her, watching her pulse and level of consciousness. More hikers showed up and kindly stayed to assist with getting her down the mountain. Luckily there were lots of young strong men. Finally the paramedics arrived - someone had driven out until they got a cell phone signal. There were 3 nurses in the group of hikers that had assembled - including me! I told the injured party this was extremely fortunate for her. One was a Peds ICU nurse and one was a Psych nurse who said she wouldn't be much use unless she had anxiety or PTSD already. The paramedics got her on a backboard and all the men around took turns doing hand over hand in a human chain to get her down the mountain. We ladies walked ahead and passed a bunch of hikers going up. We told them NOT to fall off the waterfall, as we were NOT coming back. One mountain rescue a day filled our quota. A chopper showed up and landed in a nearby field to fly her to a trauma unit. The other 2 nurses and I had a quick bitch about it being our day off and how you can never get away from it. Then we all took off. I have been calling my husband Rescue Ranger ever since. He was helping them carry her down and found it all quite exciting.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
In the beginning....
God created Nursee.
This Nursee trained in the land of England - a long time ago and far far away.
This were the dark days of NHS Nightingale wards - 40 beds - gothic Victorian hospitals with polished floors, massive sluices, clanking radiators and antiquated fixtures. We had strict old Ward Sisters who nursed during WW2 and would have put the fear of God into a whole division of SS men. Nursee was a "student" which meant working 40 hours per week doing full patient care and going into school occasionally for 2 weeks. This lasted for 3 years. We did lots of odd things like putting egg white and oxygen on decubitus ulcers. We didnt have any IV pumps or telemetry. We didnt do very much documentation AT ALL. That was excellent. There was none of this nursing process idiocy. We were left in charge on night shift, which consisted of 2 students and an aide on a 34 - 40 bed ward. You had to learn BY HEART all the names, ages, diagnoses and conditions of all your patients for when Night Sister would come to make rounds with you. We worked very hard but had lots of fun. We were extremely naughty. I had a patient whose toes were black and crispy due to lack of circulation - they came off when I did a dressing change so I put them in a nasty doctors white lab coat pocket. We sent new student nurses to OR for a bucket of sterile oxygen. OR staff would send them back saying they had to bring their own bucket. We would send them back with a bucket. They would send them back saying the bucket needed a lid....We could keep this going for ages... We would do test feeds on babies with pyloric stenosis and forget to tell the medical students it wasnt a good idea to sit right in front of the baby being fed.
Nursee graduated and has since been:
Ward Sister in Peds (UK)
Ward sister in M/S (UK)
Head Nurse (Middle East)
Assistant Chief Nurse (Middle East)
Administrator (USA)
Cardiology Practice Administrator (USA)
Home Health Nurse (USA)
Workers Comp Case Manager (USA)
Unit Director M/S (USA)
all of these pretty much sucked.... some more than others
I will be blogging about my new life in the mountains and my new job in a tiny highly dysfunctional rural hospital.... cue duelling banjos.
This Nursee trained in the land of England - a long time ago and far far away.
This were the dark days of NHS Nightingale wards - 40 beds - gothic Victorian hospitals with polished floors, massive sluices, clanking radiators and antiquated fixtures. We had strict old Ward Sisters who nursed during WW2 and would have put the fear of God into a whole division of SS men. Nursee was a "student" which meant working 40 hours per week doing full patient care and going into school occasionally for 2 weeks. This lasted for 3 years. We did lots of odd things like putting egg white and oxygen on decubitus ulcers. We didnt have any IV pumps or telemetry. We didnt do very much documentation AT ALL. That was excellent. There was none of this nursing process idiocy. We were left in charge on night shift, which consisted of 2 students and an aide on a 34 - 40 bed ward. You had to learn BY HEART all the names, ages, diagnoses and conditions of all your patients for when Night Sister would come to make rounds with you. We worked very hard but had lots of fun. We were extremely naughty. I had a patient whose toes were black and crispy due to lack of circulation - they came off when I did a dressing change so I put them in a nasty doctors white lab coat pocket. We sent new student nurses to OR for a bucket of sterile oxygen. OR staff would send them back saying they had to bring their own bucket. We would send them back with a bucket. They would send them back saying the bucket needed a lid....We could keep this going for ages... We would do test feeds on babies with pyloric stenosis and forget to tell the medical students it wasnt a good idea to sit right in front of the baby being fed.
Nursee graduated and has since been:
Ward Sister in Peds (UK)
Ward sister in M/S (UK)
Head Nurse (Middle East)
Assistant Chief Nurse (Middle East)
Administrator (USA)
Cardiology Practice Administrator (USA)
Home Health Nurse (USA)
Workers Comp Case Manager (USA)
Unit Director M/S (USA)
all of these pretty much sucked.... some more than others
I will be blogging about my new life in the mountains and my new job in a tiny highly dysfunctional rural hospital.... cue duelling banjos.
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