Nurse Ratched’s Place

This is what I look like on Monday morning after working two twelve-hour shifts over the weekend. It’s hard looking glamorous when you are exhausted. My shifts always end up being longer than twelve hours—they generally turn into 14 hours shifts—and we are always short of staff. Last night I came rolling into my driveway around 2 a.m., and then the hospital called me just about the time I started drifting off to sleep. The supervisor wanted to know if I wanted to come back into work. I don’t remember what I told her, but I’m sure that my response was colorful. AND LOUD!

Will someone please pass me another chocolate bon-bon. I’m too tired to move.

Hey, Steven, I’m over here. This is my future boss, Steven Jobs. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to hire me one day to work for him at his office. I’m going to be his private duty nurse. I want to work for Steven so I can get an employee discount on Apple products. I also want to work for Steven because he looks cute in a pair of blue jeans and in a black turtleneck sweater. Steven introduced the MacBook Air this week at Macworld 2008, and I’m putting it on my list of things that I’m going to buy when I win Lotto. It’s a skinny mini computer that tapers in thickness from .76 inch down to .16 inch. It’s beautiful to look at, just like Steven.

*sigh*

I don’t know how this happened. Someone must have slipped me a Mickey when I wasn’t looking. I’ve been suckered into working on the hospital’s Nurses Week committee. Last year’s celebration was really lame, and this year’s celebration isn’t going to be any better thanks to our hospital administrator, Mr. Grinch. He is continuing his tradition of being a tightwad. Mr. Grinch told us to be frugal, and he gave us a budget of $3000 to provide gifts, activities, and a dinner for over 300 nurses during Nurse’s Week. We asked for more funding and he told us that the hospital is strapped for cash. As a side note, we just found out that the hospital made a profit of 3.8 million dollars last year, but I digress. We’ve been told to beg venders like Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson for money, food, and products to give away as gifts. I’m not begging pharmaceutical companies for trinkets. I begging for tranquilizers.

Happy freakin’ Nurse’s Week.

Photograph by Mother Jones, RN

Those are my tootsies sticking out from the bubbles. I’m not in a good mood. In fact, I would rate my mood as a 9.5 on the “Cranky Old Nurse Scale.” My entire body hurts. Why? Because one of my patients went ballistic and repeatedly slammed me into a wall this weekend when I was at work. Then I had to tackle my patient in the hallway with the help of another nurse while security raced to our unit. I know what’s going to happen next. My boss is going to call me up on the phone and ask, “What are you going to do to keep this situation from happening again?” Here’s a thought. LEAVE NURSING! We were understaffed, and we didn’t receive any support when we told administration something very bad was going to happen if we didn’t get extra help. But everyone knows that it’s always the nurse’s fault when something goes wrong on his or her unit.

I’ve unplugged the phone, popped some Tylenol, and I’m taking a long hot bubble bath while sipping on a few Margaritas. Oh yeah, and I’m also taking pictures of myself getting drunk in the bathtub. Thank God for quiet Monday afternoons.

Oh. My. Gawd! It’s time for another edition of Change of Shift. I’m calling all of my friends to let them know that they can catch the new edition over at Nursing Jobs. org. It’s some of the best reading in the blogosphere, so go check it out.

I was a wallflower when I was in high school. There are pretty girls, and then there are girls with a “nice personality.” I was the latter. I was sweet sixteen, never kissed, and never…well, you know what I mean. I’m pretty sure that I was the only virgin in my graduating class. The pretty girls in my high school dated the cool guys and ran for homecoming queen. I stayed home on Saturday nights and watched Laurence Welk with my parents. Popularity was out of reach, but I learned to cope, and life went on.

Now I’m having flash backs of high school. Kim from Emergiblog surfed over to Medgadget last week, and nominated Nurse Ratched’s Place as Medical Blog of the Year. I felt like I had just been nominated for homecoming queen. My blog was on an A List with some really popular blogs, and I was hanging out with the cool guys, like Kevin MD. I was so happy, but now my dreams are dashed. The committee that is running the contest has cut my blog from the list of nominees. Where’s my scepter? Where are my flowers? Damn it, I want a crown!

OK, maybe I can’t be homecoming queen, but can someone at least ask me out to the prom?

I’m kicking back and reading some new books. Dr. Neuschatz contacted me and he asked me to review his book, and being a devout bibliophile, I agreed to write a review. Dr. Joseph J. Neuschatz is the author of TerrO.R. It’s a quick read for anyone who likes a good book.

The main character is Dr. Phillip Newman. He is a quirky physician who loves his job as an anesthesiologist. And of course, he is married to a beautiful nurse. I really like that part of the book. The man obviously has good taste. Well, anyway, Dr. Newman cares for a healthy nineteen-year-old man who wants a tattoo removed, and unfortunately for Dr. Newman, the young man dies on the operating table. The young man’s father refuses an autopsy based on religious grounds, and then socks the doctor with a huge lawsuit. That’s when the sleuthing begins. I’m not going to give away the ending. Let’s just say that it should scare the pants off of the people who work at Home Land Security.

I liked the book, but there are a few issues that the author needed to work on before his book went to press. I found some typos, and some misspellings. The plot was also somewhat disconnected, and the conclusion seemed a little rushed. The book needed a professional editor to whip it into shape. However, even with these weaknesses, the book wasn’t a bad read.

Thanks for the book, Dr. Neuschatz. Nice work!

I’ve been getting a lot of email this weekend from readers asking me what I think about Britney Spears. I don’t really know what’s happening to the pop princess, but I know what was happening on Cedar-Sinai Medical Center’s psychiatric unit when Britney Spears checked in. This is how the night played out:

The phone is ringing at the nurses station. It’s the emergency room nurse calling report. “Hello, Charge Nurse, you are getting a new admission from the emergency room. It’s Britney Spears. Age 26, diagnosis, Mood Disorder, NOS, rule out Bipolar Disorder. Oh yes, (snicker) Miss Pop Princess is telling me that she is a VIP, and she is asking that we please accommodate her every need.” The charge nurse hears Britney screaming obscenities in the background.

Then Britney is strapped down in four point restraints, and is wheeled to the unit with her posse in tow. The press comes racing up in the elevators, and camera strobes are flashing as the unit door slams shut. The charge nurse meets her new patient. “Good evening Ms. Spears. I’m going to be your nurse tonight, but first I need some information. Do you have any allergies?”

Britney: “*uck YOU!”

The Spears family is ushered into a side office while Britney is given a massive dose of Haldol and Ativan, and goes to sleep for the night.

The next day, Britney denies having a problem, and blames everyone else for the consequences of her actions. So what if she was drunk and high on prescription medications? She’s a superstar and can do whatever she wants. And the kids? Well, they belong to her, so her ex-husband, Kevin, can just *uck off! Then, a couple of days later, Britney throws a temper tantrum and her spineless doctor releases her from the hospital against medical advice. I’m sure that the nurses who were working on Britney’s discharge paperwork were surprised by Dr. Phil’s arrival onto the unit. We must be approaching Sweeps Week.

Maybe I’m the one who is crazy, but Britney reminds me of Marilyn Monroe. She’s going to be dead soon if she doesn’t get some serious help.

My favorite drug rep works for Johnson and Johnson. He learned from our psychiatrist that we didn’t receive anything for Christmas from our hospital administrator, Mr. Grinch, so he came to our unit bearing gifts. What a great guy! He gave us a Christmas card along with a big box filled with pens, notepads, paperclip holders, clocks, and clipboards. We loved all of his gifts, but we were especially delighted to receive Johnson and Johnson’s new goodie, Invega popcorn. Our drug rep knows that nurses love to eat because we always whine at him if he doesn’t bring in Risperdal popcorn . We all looked forward to popping up some bags of the new popcorn after the patients turned in for the night, but our enthusiasm for the popcorn quickly went up in smoke.

Unfortunately, I must give the new popcorn a thumbs down. My opinion has nothing to do with the popcorn’s lack of active ingredients (see disclaimer printed on the side of the bag). I don’t like the popcorn because of all of the old maids. Unlike the Risperdal popcorn, the kernels in the Invega popcorn are old, and they won’t pop up. One nurse kept trying to re-pop the old maids, but had to stop when the paper popcorn bag started burning in the microwave oven. Security wasn’t happy when the smoke detector was activated. Neither was the fire department. Enough said.

We still love our drug rep, and we sent him a thank you note for his thoughtfulness. I’m sure that he didn’t know that he was giving us a fire hazard as a Christmas gift.

This publication is from my growing collection of paperback books. It’s a first edition, and it was published in 1961. Nurses have always been portrayed angels of mercy, or as loose women in popular culture. This book takes the latter approach. The book’s main character is Eleanor. She is the eavesdropper who is listening in on her friend’s conversation. According to the author, Eleanor has a million-dollar body and no mind of her own. I hate to disillusion the porn crowd, but I’ve never met a nurse who didn’t have a mind of her own. Mindless nurses only exist in the mind of smutty writers. On the other hand, I’ll admit that not all nurses are angels. I once worked with a young woman who worked her way through nursing school as a call girl, and I’ve just starting working with a woman who wished that she had Eleanor’s million-dollar body.

I met my new coworker last night. She’s a very nice older lady with graying hair, three grown children, two grandchildren, and her husband who just retired. Half way through our shift, she turned to me and said that she needed some advice. She said that she is under a lot of financial stress, and that the other nurses had told her that I’m always looking for new opportunities, and that I always have creative ideas. She told me that she was getting behind on her mortgage payment, and she asked if I had any ideas about how she could make some extra money.

I listened to her plight, and then I asked her what she liked to do in her spare time, and where her strengths and talents lie. She thought a moment, and then said that she likes working with people, that she is a good listener, and that she likes making people happy. Then she quickly added that she was thinking about working in the sex industry. After a moment of stunned silence, and I asked her if she thought she might be a little too old to stand on a street corner all night while wearing four inch stiletto high heel shoes. She looked surprised by my response, and said that she was thinking about working as a phone sex operator from home. She said that she was too old to turn tricks, but that she enjoyed talking dirty to her husband over the phone. She wanted to know if I thought that she could parlay her talents into a new, lucrative career. What could I say?

I wished her luck in achieving her career goals in the New Year.