Saturday, November 24, 2007

A Good Holiday.

Well I haven't written in awhile due to the holiday's, I was a little busy. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I did.

So what's new in my RT world. Well as we know I work in a smaller hospital and one thing I recently noticed is that our ICU is being used as a Drunk Tank, or detox for alcohol. Well what I mean is lately we have had a bit of patients in the ICU who were just in for alcohol poisoning as their diagnosis, in my opinion they were just intoxicated, drank a bit to much and maybe a little depressed due to the holidays coming up. Yes this is a small town hospital and from what I have heard there is only like 6 police in this town so really that probably don't have the resources to service these people in the jail like they did on the Andy Griffith show when Otis would get drunk and then come to the station to sleep it off. Now really is this a good place to put these people? All of them have been men and normally the majority of RN's working in the ICU are women and these drunk men can get a little unruly at times so it doesn't make much sense to me because if there is a physical problem or threat I'm usually one of the people who are called, not that I mind because I enjoy messing around with the drunk people, makes me laugh, but it could become dangerous for the RN's sometimes I'm thinking. In all honestly when I first started here I asked about security and people snickered a bit. Then I was told that if a security risk should come up like a combative patient or family member that the call will go out overheard for the men to come to that area. Kind of funny because on any given night there are maybe a total of 3-5 men in house at night and sometimes less I'm sure. Lets see tonight there is me, a Doc in the ER and a old lab tech, and possibly a guy from engineering. I'm alright, I lift weights a few days a week, was a soldier for 10 years, played football and I workout on a heavy bag a couple times a week so I'd like to think I can hold my own. It just made me laugh a bit that there were really no type of security here in this small hospital, I came from a hospital where there were uniform security, no guns but night sticks and pepper spray, oh and handcuffs to.

Since I have been here for the last 8 months there has been no calls for security so maybe it's warranted for the no official security force, but with all the drunks being admitted lately the time may come sooner than they think.


Oh well, happy holidays everyone hope it's not to busy.

2 comments:

Rick Frea said...

It's all quite the same where I work. And of course they all need breathing treatments. You know the rule: If a patient is gross or annoying, RT should be involved.

Anonymous said...

Good words.