Watching a man die from HIV with dementia on a forensic psych ward because his family refused to take him back but also wouldn’t sign the DNR.
Watching a nurse shove a softball sized chunk of woundvac foam into a bedsore so deep you could see bare bone at the bottom.
Having to hold a woman down who’s screaming and clawing at me as a nurse shoves a rectal tube into her because they gave her laxatives so she could shit out all the ammonia her alcoholic liver couldn’t process anymore but now the ammonia is starting to dissolve her anus but it’s already too far gone to hold the anchor donut so they just keep trying to reinsert it for almost an hour because she’s so sick and so out of it that her family have power of attorney and “do everything you can, don’t just let her die!”
Being assigned to sit with a man to keep him from pulling off his ventilator mask and every time he manages it he can barely even say just let me die and the only thing that keeps him from trying to rip it off again is me summarizing the plots of the last five books I read because his family has also decided he should have to live.
Discharging barely coherent psych patients back to the street because we need the bed to get somebody even less coherent off the street.
Getting a man from the ER who couldn’t stand after a drug overdose because the ER nurses assumed he was faking.
Having to tell an intensivist that I don’t know how long a man’s oxygen saturation has been in the 70s because he was on a psych hold so his 2h trip down from the mountains was in the back of a cop car. When we gave him oxygen his speech instantly cleared up. He had a history of schizophrenia, so they just assumed that’s what it was.
All the people that try to kill themselves to escape group homes and assisted living.
All the people getting most of their mental Healthcare in prison and jail.
Watching a man die from HIV with dementia on a forensic psych ward because his family refused to take him back but also wouldn’t sign the DNR.
Watching a nurse shove a softball sized chunk of woundvac foam into a bedsore so deep you could see bare bone at the bottom.
Having to hold a woman down who’s screaming and clawing at me as a nurse shoves a rectal tube into her because they gave her laxatives so she could shit out all the ammonia her alcoholic liver couldn’t process anymore but now the ammonia is starting to dissolve her anus but it’s already too far gone to hold the anchor donut so they just keep trying to reinsert it for almost an hour because she’s so sick and so out of it that her family have power of attorney and “do everything you can, don’t just let her die!”
Being assigned to sit with a man to keep him from pulling off his ventilator mask and every time he manages it he can barely even say just let me die and the only thing that keeps him from trying to rip it off again is me summarizing the plots of the last five books I read because his family has also decided he should have to live.
Discharging barely coherent psych patients back to the street because we need the bed to get somebody even less coherent off the street.
Getting a man from the ER who couldn’t stand after a drug overdose because the ER nurses assumed he was faking.
Having to tell an intensivist that I don’t know how long a man’s oxygen saturation has been in the 70s because he was on a psych hold so his 2h trip down from the mountains was in the back of a cop car. When we gave him oxygen his speech instantly cleared up. He had a history of schizophrenia, so they just assumed that’s what it was.
All the people that try to kill themselves to escape group homes and assisted living.
All the people getting most of their mental Healthcare in prison and jail.
I’ll let you know what else I remember.