Look to the last post for inspiration. This is all about talking about my icky night at work. I've got some aggression to work through before I'm going to get an ounce of sleep.
So, the night started off bad when people looked shocked that I was there. They acted surprised that I hadn't called in. Yes, that means the HH had a terrible weekend. Blasted nursing homes. That means the negative energy was rolling over from the horrible two days and I was bound to suffer. It doesn't help that I'm wrestling with this whole inner turmoil thing right now. It's about the opposite of fun.
Un-fun!It started by their putting me on our BIGGEST hall by myself for 45 minutes. What, you may ask, can happen in that small amount of time? Lots. During this time, we need to get a lot of people up and ready for supper. It doesn't happen so conveniently when every five seconds either a new call light would pop on or another worker would run up and beg for my help. I curse all breaks. They're not my friend. I was also impressed when a supervisor told me that I needed to hurry up and get the call lights because there was too long of a wait.
Many words came to mind for this person. Luckily I have the insane ability to bite my tongue very hard-like and walk away.
As soon as everyone was done with their supper break, things calmed down a bit. Another Aide came into work and she was assigned to me. Yay for the extra help. Boo hiss that she's a newb.
An extreme newb. Don't get me wrong! I support newbies everywhere! But when we're on the most time consuming and demanding hall, I expect to be assigned someone with experience. But NO. I get the newb. The slow newb. (I'm bitter. Bear with me.)
We got to supper largely unscathed. I will say that I'm not a fan of the whole "ask permission to do EVERYTHING" schpeal. This newb may be cute and innocent, but she's still been with us for over a month. She should know by now that she's pretty much allowed to do anything in the way of taking residents out to supper. During Supper, I ran around like a mad woman attempting to get a dependant resident to eat and another from falling out of her wheelchair.
Then it happened. I was putting the 'falling' one to bed when she was blowing her nose. Great and all, 'cept she didn't have a kleenex!
There was a lot of snot and no barrier between it and her hand. I can handle blood, vomit, excrement, urine, but I swear snot has a particular way with me. And this way often entails me gagging a lot. She's extremely lucky I didn't have anything to eat all day. That would have been a HUGE mess.
And then the spree started. I figured that while my co-worker was slow, she'd be able to at least help me put the doubles to bed (doubles referencing those residents that require TWO for their assistance). I was so wrong in that assumption. My friend put a grand total of
four residents to bed, one of which doesn't really count because she was watching as I showed her how to deal with intricate tubing . . . so three.
THREE in three hours. No one can be that slow. Not a one. Although when I nearly knocked her over with the door because she was watching TV, I may have discovered WHY she was taking so long, but I digress.
Now, why is this such a big deal? Let's look at the stats. J, the person that was non-floor-like and more med-like tonight, graciously helped us put
three residents to bed. Notably in like thirty minutes, so props to her. That means I took care of
nine of them independently. Works out fantastically for me who has a herniated disc. The night got better when two of our residents acquired loose stools. It was broadcast to dynamic proportions when urine got sprayed on my face. Yes, urine.
The night progressed as it should with my being absolutely irritated by the whole situation and my discussing my distaste with the charge nurse.
We agreed that the newb wasn't allowed to work on the hard hall for awhile. Which is good because I'm always on the hard hall. After that though, things diminished again. One of the sweet girls kept announcing a phone call for a resident, which we couldn't answer because the phones were broken in her room. By the third g0-round of paging, I finally had managed to acquire a cordless phone. After this panicked run-around, I was not so happy (in fact, rather infuriated) that I found not only the pager herself, but four other girls sitting at the other end of the building chatting. Maturely, I threw my charts around and shook my head.
In retrospect, this was definitely better than throwing my charts at them. One of my biggest pet peeves are people that come to work and don't do their jobs well. Coupled with those that do nothing to support the establishment of teamwork and you get a sense for what I was feeling for these ladies.To top it all off, one of our confused ladies attempted to attack me with her walker. While not succesful in the endeavor, she DID catch me off guard, which wasn't so great when I swirled around to see what she was doing. The momentum nearly knocked her off her feet. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would have been a really bad thing.
Residents + floor = owies. Just before I was about to leave, Newb came up to me and told me that she wanted to leave.
Recomendation for future newbs: never tell someone that just spent the last three hours having to pick up your slack because you fail to realize the need to fulfill your role that you want to go home. It doesn't go over well. Kinda makes them mad. And I, as a mere human, got very angry. I think I sputtered some incomprehensible order for her to go pass the night snacks and I literally ran down the hall away from her as fast as possible.
I figured if all else failed, I'd be the first one to clock out and therefore would be the first to get to go home. I didn't stop running until I got to my car.Welcome to one of my jobs. Tomorrow I get to work at the Big M Clothing store in our mall, which is such an amazing and relaxing atmosphere that I hope I can forget today's events. That or else I'm going to have to order a mega bottle of antacids.
