Hot Tip For Drug-Seeking Posers

Dear @$$hole military veteran wannabees:

If you're going to try and sell yourself as a tragically drug-addicted PTSD-suffering veteran of the Vietnam War, you might want to either
A) CRACK A FRIGGIN' BOOK, or
B) Come up with a better birth certificate.

Specifically, when your date of birth reveals that you would have been aged 15 years when the Vietnam War ended, it's probably not a hot idea to try BSing your sad tale, laced with requests for more pain meds, by piggybacking it onto your tragic story of heroin addiction caused by all that heavy incoming fire and buddies blown away you suffered during your imaginary service there in such exotic places as Gang Bang Wang and Sum Dum Ly.

Especially when your nurse is a military veteran, with a keen lifelong interest in history in general, and military history in particular, and oh yeah, an older brother who spent the summer after high school ducking rockets on the DMZ in '67, and turning his parents' hair prematurely grey, until he returned home with all his original body parts and no extra orifices.

And you should probably ask for the hospital chaplain to visit you, to offer thanks to a merciful God on your behalf that it's both unethical, and against the best practices in the employee handbook, for me to give you the dick-punching you so richly deserve.

Save your Special Agent Orange resume for the other dope addict losers under your bridge. As a very wise person once wrote, "A lie is a poor way to say "hello".

The Waiting Room Channel - PSA #1

Hi there, and welcome to The Waiting Room Channel.
Are you here for abdominal pain?
If so, then NO, YOU CAN'T EAT OR DRINK ANYTHING.
You can come here for our world famous turkey sandwiches, or you can come here for treatment of your abdominal pain, but not both.
Did you bring your child here for abdominal pain?
If so, then NO, HE CAN'T HAVE THE BAG OF FLAMING HOT CHEETOS, UNLESS YOU WANT THE DELUXE "Discharged by MD from Waiting Room" TREATMENT PLAN.

This is because your abdominal pain could be caused by something that requires surgery. If you eat, you can't get anesthesia for 6-8 additional hours, during which time your potential surgical emergency could kill or seriously afflict you. Which our Risk Management Department, and your insurance company (unless you have ObamaCare) really frowns upon.

And if the abdominal pain is accompanied by nausea/vomiting/diarrhea, we really don't think it's in your best interest (or ours) to load the catapult for the next launch.

But if you'd really like to come here and throw up anyways, could you please do it in one of the boxes pre-addressed to Press-Ganey, so we can ship it right out to them?

Thanks boxloads.

This message repeats in Spanish in 10 seconds.

Plus ca change...

Two lifeflight traumas, three psych patients, an ICU admit whose AICD kept firing in the ED, and two obnoxious drunks. Not a bad first orientation shift on a new assignment.

Nice to be back home.

"How the hell do you not get burnt out doing this?"

I really, really enjoy my job.  (When I get to do it. The three dozen things a shift that have jack and squat to do with actually caring for patients still suck my soul out.)

There's always bad shifts, even bad weeks, but when I catch myself getting overly grumpy about it, I make a mental game out of kicking its @$$.

Life really is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you decide to feel about it. I realized it's a lot more fun going through life as the cat than as the litter box.

And when it's time for time off, GTHO and have fun. (Also, if you never go away, they never miss you. Really.) At least one county away by car is great; if it involves a plane ride somewhere else, so much the better. This year I'm picking off the 27 states I've never been to - and probably finally getting the (online, now!) BSN they swore I couldn't live without as a nurse - by 1995 (snort!). Next year, I'm either doing countries, or destinations. I want to see what a full passport looks like.

But after a week, 10-14 days tops, I start getting twitchy to get back to work. I've never not had a job (except during part of college) since I was 13.  That's mumblemumble an awfully long time, so force of habit there as much as anything else I suppose. Total days, lifetime, on any sort of state unemployment, zero. Trabajo. Period.

BTW, assuming someone does 3x12hr shifts weekly, if you pick up 1 extra shift/wk at a different facility, you network, see how other people do things, have a fallback job when your main gig craps out on you (and they will!), and you have about 20-25% after taxes of your annual pay in your hand as your Better Life slush fund if you simply put it in a jar every payday. I highly recommend it for anyone with 5+ yrs. experience. That's vacation, retirement, a down payment on a mortgage, or a new car, in return for one extra set of clean scrubs every laundry day. Times the rest of your career, that's one helluva better place to be in. Wish I'd started doing it ten years sooner.

One other thing: if you have an ounce of discipline, keep a shift log.
E.g., I'm about to embark on a 13-week contract. Or, 39 shifts. Potentially, as many as 65. Whatever.
But if you'd like to put what you do in perspective, start a little tally:
Say, something like : 4 GSWs, 19 MVCs, 42 MIs, 23 CVAs, 37 hot appys, 59 fractures, 107 psychs, 317 FDGBs, 81 peds, 126 admits, and a little boy with a toy soldier up his nose.
1423 doctor's orders implemented, 917 meds passed with no errors, 182 IVs started, 12 NG tubes, 56 foley caths, 918 phone calls, and 2 teddy bears successfully returned home with their smiling owners.
It lets you see just what an actual difference you make, and it's a metric fuckton more persuasive than the jacked up ratings on annual evaluations if you want to point out what you've actually done for your facility, if you're there long enough for an annual evaluation and raise discussion.
Trust me on that.

Like that slush fund, consider the tally another way of paying yourself first.

Too Much Free Time? Moi??