A Badge, A Gun, And Maybe 70 IQ Points

We didn't plan on this post. It just happened. We don't hate the police. We don't love them. We mostly understand they have a thankless, dirty job most days, and try to work with them. And realize that some of them are really good guys, and some of them are asswipes, and we give them the benefit of the doubt unless and until they prove to be the latter. Pretty much like we expect they do in their jobs too.

We point out for the record that the entire reason this blog has illustrations and memes homemade by your host in shop class in the first place began specifically with the douchebadge actions of a couple of overwhelmingly @$$holish cops in Salt Lake City, when they arrested an ER nurse for refusing to violate the Constitution, state law, hospital policy, written police procedure, professional medical ethics, and common sense, by refusing to violate an unconscious patient's civil rights at the demand of those same badged and sworn @$$holes, long-since fired and demoted for that particular jackassery.

We bring this up because as we had just finished our last shift for the week, and were minding our own business and driving home this morning, when we noticed someone running barefoot up the street, in (some of) their scanty clothes, and still wearing what looked like a hospital wristband, moving at a respectable rate of speed away from the hospital for early in the AM.

We pulled over up the street, and called the front desk security officer on duty from our car.

"Are we perchance missing anyone who may have run out of the hospital in some of their clothes?"

"What color clothes?"

We described them.

"Bingo! That's one of the psych patients who just ran out the door!"

So, we proceeded to follow the patient at a discreet distance, so as not to spook them, and notified 9-1-1 we had eyeballs on an escaped mental patient, on a legal hold (meaning they are either a danger to themself, others, or simply too cray-cray to manage their daily affairs), and kept them in sight to direct the local constables to apprehend them, and return them to medical care as quickly, simply, and safely as possible.

We gave the po-po dispatch a stellar description, exact location, and followed the pt. for two measured miles on foot for most of an hour, giving them a play-by-play, until said patient ducked into a residential block around a corner with multiple possible routes out, before we got to that corner. We lost our quarry at that point, but the constabulary's minions quickly found the patient walking nearby, made contact, and detained them.

Whereupon they ascertained that the person was the exact patient we had described and followed, confirmed name and birthdate with hospital staff, and confirmed that the patient was indeed on a psych eval hold before escaping our care.

And then the stupid motherfuckers, the pride of county law enforcement, for reasons known but to God and the hamsters in their otherwise empty heads, let the escaped psych patient go free. 

Absolutely. M*****f***ing. F-R-E-E.

Guys who wouldn't let you talk your way out of a ticket with your dying grandmother bleeding out her ass in the front seat, turned loose a half-dressed bona fide certified lunatic, identified to them by name.

Who knows: maybe the patient used Jedi mind tricks.

Sleep tight, America. Professionals are on the case. 

Top. Men.

It's not bad enough that these assclowns bring us every douchebag waste of skin drunk, junkie, or whackjob within 20 miles, even when they shouldn't, but that now, the one time we specifically ask the stupid bastards to bring one very specific whackjob back to the ER, and they detain that exact person, they turn them loose on society, because reasons, and a badged and sworn 70 point IQ.

So, Deputy Doofus, and Deputy Stumblefuck, this question is for you:

You had one job...

Like sounding the depths of the Marianas Trench, We're beginning to realize that the answer to that question cannot be ascertained with existing instrumentation.

And, full disclosure here, there are screw-ups aplenty to go around, starting with who was supposed to be watching the Nutjob in question when they scampered out the hospital door to become a law enforcement problem, and how said Nutjob got their grubby mitts on some of their own clothes, which should have been removed and secured far out of reach and not anywhere close to them. The upcoming struggle sessions fisking that series of cock-ups are going to leave a mark or two.

But like soccer, the person who touched it last is at fault, so if patient Screwloose kills themself, or anyone else, or some harm comes to them as a result of being now at liberty, the lion's share of liability now belongs overwhelmingly to the County's Finest Knuckleheads, who had a chance to fix that small problem, but instead created an even bigger one.

And also, we generally try to expedite law enforcement custody patients getting in and out ASAP, on the theory that the best place for law enforcement is not sitting around the ER waiting for us to get things done, but rather on patrol, doing their job.

No points for guessing who's going to make sure and drag out those visits henceforth as long as humanly possible for some good amount of time, and who may even let their brethren in blue know why they're now being assured of going dead last, until suitable obsequious mea culpas are delivered appropriately from the agency responsible for this grand slam of cock-ups.

In the meantime, dickheads, this one's for you:

And While We're Up:

These are the guys some folks are worried are coming to take away your guns??

Sheee-yit, most days some of them are lucky if they don't put their shoes and socks on, in that order.

Why ENA Sucks - This Week

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Truth

 

Now We Are Ten

 

Sonofagun. Past it, in fact. As of early last month.

Didn't even notice in all the hubbub of normal life.

We are also damned near the last and only ER nursing blog that's not happygas and rah-rah pablum still in existence. Shrtstormtrooper, God love her, keeps plugging away on her blog, and more regularly, we confess, than we have on this one. But she sounds about ready to throw in the towel on the ER, and make a mental health move to something less soul-crushing. Time will tell.

We didn't realize ten years' time would get us the Sole Survivor crown in this endeavor, and as we said, we haven't been nearly as prolific or consistent dropping in over here as we have at our other endeavor.

Part of that is because after the first year or two, you've seen almost everything you're ever going to see in the ER, for 95% of patients. A sprained knee or appendicitis is exactly like every other one. (Thank heavens.)

The other 5% is unbelievably hilarious, jaw-droppingly horrific, or mind-bogglingly weird (sometimes all of the above).

But we've got, according to the Social Security Administration, probably another decade of shoveling coal down here in the boiler room before we can think about docking this battleship and getting off. And if we hit the Powerball tomorrow, while we love the job, and most of our co-workers, we'd leave skid marks out of the parking lot, and send the night shift a prepaid food truck every night for a month as a goodbye present, and never think about it again, unless writing a book or a script.

And sleep soundly every night, and walk around with a smile on my face every day afterwards.

But we took care of another...seventeen patients just last week, directly, and saved at least three of them from dying that day. And that part never gets old, no matter how tired we are of the drunks, addicts, and drug-seeking @$$holes who waste our time and effort, society's money, and their own lives.

So we're not going anywhere, anytime soon. Including online.

Just disappointed currently, because of having a preceptee/new grad for a couple of months, who was learning the gig ahead of schedule (95% her, and 5% us), and then was taken away and farmed out to good nurses and bad for the next two months, and is now struggling, hesitant, had her confidence shot, needing extra time in orientation training, and may possibly crash and burn, because manglement does what it does deaf and blindfolded, and can't figure out why they keep losing 90% of their new grad trainees, when they keep turning them over to nurses who couldn't teach their way out of a wet paper bag, let alone imbue a new grad with the skills to do this job. We could teach a motivated monkey to do it well, but we're not somebody's bestie, and thus not liable to get that opportunity again.

That absolutely and quite simply sucks.

And it's unethical, unlawful, and sadly against hospital policy to take the guilty jackholes into the supply room and do some one-on-one wall-to-wall counselling, to teach them the error of their ways.

That's a notable pity as well.

Because I like my job, and I'd like to download some wee quantity of what I know and learned in the last nearly thirty years doing it, before it's too late. But I don't love that enough to ride that concern right over the cliff.

And the Flying @$$holes always self-select for more Flying @$$holes, and can't figure out why better quality people always end up leaving, or not getting on their team in the first place. 

Said every staff member at every hospital since Florence Nightingale was a new grad.

At any rate, since noticing the recently passed blogiversary, we are entitled to a party and some cake. And many happy returns of the day.

Best wishes to all who drop by here, and a commendation to those who continue to fight the good fight, in the professions and careers that matter, to the highest extent humanly possible in this lifetime.

What do you do at work? I save lives. 

You too? Pretty effing awesome resume, right there.

Timeless Truth

 Everybody walking into the building at the beginning of the shift:

Everybody walking out of the building at the end of shift: