BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
back orders for more than 13 weeks.
• The lonely traveler. As a traveling nurse at a hospital network, it's possible to be assigned to a different facility for every day of the week.
The foreignness you feel is compounded one night after the last case when your surgical team discovers they're the only ones left in the department. (You can hear the crickets.) Stick with them, or call ahead to PACU, because the badge you need to get through doors may not have been activated yet.
• Hello, EMR? You can be deactivated from the electronic charting system even though you're still working under a valid contract. You tell the supervisor, call IT and get transferred to 5 other people, finally ending up with IT again. While you can't access patient records, you
can still withdraw meds from the dispensing system.
• Know your place. I can get cocaine out of the dispenser, but I can't witness a wastage with the anesthesiologist.
• Be prepared to be amazed. The schedule may say gall bladder, but that's no guarantee the case will be the everyday laparoscopy you've seen elsewhere. In a teaching hospital, the patient might be in multisystem failure in ICU on a vent. With a trache. And a central IJ line. Plus an A-line. And a femoral line. On the left and right.
• Rules are rules. A nursing degree and license with 20-plus years of
experience don't qualify you to operate a clinical analyzer for blood testing. You have to produce your high school diploma and attend an
all-day seminar. OSM
Ms. Watkins can be reached at pwatkins12@comcast.net.
