I've never been a surgical nurse, but I've gathered enough intel to know that these people live and breath off of consents. This is complicated when the patient is, say, a confused elderly person with head trauma who's only present relative is the mentally incapacitated son he had been taking care of before the fall that landed him in the hospital. That the surgeon got said family member to sign the consent for the patient is both tragically hilarious (a doctor who can't tell someone is clinically coo-coo for cocoa puffs) and irrelevant. Now the OR holding charge nurse is calling me to expel all the frustration her life has managed to build up to this point in addition to her annoyance that this consent means essentially nothing.
Deep breath, I tell her. Fuck you, you tells me. Metaphorically.
Of course I take care of it, because that's what I do. Don't panic, don't get upset, just get it done. I call the MPOA, who has no idea there's a surgery happening, so I call the doctor and tell him to call the MPOA to explain the surgery and then I call her back to sign the consent over the phone. It's not brain surg - er - rocket science. It's just annoying.
Then I get yelled at by the tele nurse. Yeah, I'm transferring a patient at shift change which is super annoying, but hey - I didn't write the orders for a cardiac monitor. He calls back all in a huff because the 0900 meds were charted "not given." Well, sir, as per my note and as the patient themselves may have told you were you insightful enough to ask, the patient took those meds at home before coming to the ER today. Would you prefer I double dose him? Were you really that mad he missed his Colace and Pepcid? Did you think a 5mg Norvasc was going to somehow prevent him from going into arrhythmia? Really? Have you even been to nursing school? Do you even work here?
Of course, I say none of those things. I try to remain calm, collected, professional in an environment where my colleagues are apparently members of that unfortunate demographic of people who were either raised in a barn or by wolves. Or by ass people. My only real concern is how this will effect me long-term. Should I be worried? Is this the way these people are as a baseline, or did this working environment somehow turn them into raging, loud anti-professionals? Can this also happen to me?
I think not and I'll tell you why: I don't plan on being here that long. The usual incubation period for assholery is about ten years. It takes a full decade for that amount of frustration and annoyance and anger to really stew together into the correct formula and I for one intend to get out before the compound can be sufficiently mixed. I'm not stuck here; this is not my forever. So for now, continue as usual but know that in future you will have to get used to verbally assaulting someone else.
And also, go fornicate with yourself, you offspring of a rather uncouth and in my estimation unseemly female of ill repute.
