Cover your workers, don't set them up for failure.

My wife as I have said before is a ER nurse at another hospital and she came home the other night just a little bit distraught about something that happened at work where a couple good points or we can say lessons came out that can come into play for all medical professions.

I was night shift and she had a patient who was a child and a very overbearing mother to go along with the child. An I.V. was placed in the patient and it took about 6 nurses and tech's to hold this 8 year old child down who was biting and kicking to get the I.V. done. I.V was finished and blood was drawn.

My wife grabbed the labels off the chart the tech had put on there and labeled the blood tubes and send then to lab. 1o minutes later the lab calls and said they were the wrong labels they were for another patient.

Not good but can be fixed, the patient has a I.V. so we can just draw more. Now lab comes down to draw more blood from the patient and is told to wait a moment so we can get the labels together. Lab does not hold on and goes ahead and throws her fellow workers in front of a truck. This young lab tech goes into the patients room and proceeds to tell the patients mother that the Nurse screwed up the blood and didn't put the correct labels on the tubes.

Good job young lab tech, not mom is irate and comes out of the room into another patients room and starts yelling and dropping the F bomb all over the place to my wife right in front of another patient. Calling her the worst nurse ever, this hospital sucks, I'm taking my child outta here (go ahead), among other colorful things.

Now how could this of been avoided? Of course double checking the labels, yes that is a lesson learned. Also though this lab tech could of easily told the mother that they needed more blood for another test, or that the blood in a tube clotted, anything but YOUR NURSE SCREWED UP, and this could of all be avoided. The patient had a I.V. so there would not be another needle stick at all. Easy fix.

The security was called for a irate parent, the nurse supervisor called the young lab tech and chewed her out and the doctor said nothing was wrong with the patient anyways, plus my wife was upset and said some things to the parent.

What did we learn from this besides checking your labels:

1. Cover the integrity of your fellow employers and the reputation of the hospital if it is possible.
2. Do not set people up for failure, help each other out and things run smoother for everyone.


It's easy, just use you brain and common sense.

Thanks for reading, Drive on RT's.

The PediaRTritian is born

Pediatrics are an interesting bunch, sometimes they receive treatments like adults and others times they are treated totally differently. Either way we all know pediatric patients do cause some nervousness with certain people.

I like to think that I have quite a bit of experience with pediatric patients. Lets see I worked in a level 3 NICU which I was also on the neonatal transport team where a RN and RT would fly or drive babies born with problems, normally respiratory problems. I have also worked in a Pediatric ICU along with different peds units. On top of all of that I also have 4, yes I said 4 kids at home. I've been around the peds population a bit.

So you ask where am I going with this? Well it has to do with the small town hospital I work at currently. Now this is a small town hospital that really doesn't get a lot of pediatric patients at all.

It is that time of the year for evaluations and I was called into the supervisor's office to do a little evaluating of me for the past year which I had just started working at this hospital. So I'm going through the Blah Blah Blah, your doing fine, Blah Blah Blah, what can you improve on, etc etc and this comes out.

Supervisor - "A RN wrote you up some months ago about not feeling comfortable with you as the RT of a peds patient, but was comfortable with your other night shift cohort."

Look on my face: WTF? I do remember this patient.

Me - "How so, I took great care of this patient."

Super - "Well this was a new nurse and she said that you didn't help her very much."

Me - "Help her with what, I did my RT stuff and the patient was in no distress."

Super - "She was just new and nervous and wished that your were more around to help her be comfortable with a respiratory peds patient."

Me - "Really? But isn't she a nurse who went through school? I'm not sure I understand what she was getting at, but I guess where I come from there are nurses who are pediatric nurses."


OK so after chatting a little while it basically came down to the supervisor, who is also the floor's supervisor, letting me know she want's us more involved in the care of peds patients with respiratory problems. Just help our more because the RN's don't get a lot of peds patients and get a little nervous around them.

Correct me if I'm wrong but do we not get the same amount of respiratory peds patients as the RN's do as inpatients? Granted I probably have more experience that most of the nurses on that floor with peds but still, what more can I do besides educate those RN's who are not comfortable with respiratory issues, I will not sit there and hold their hand. I guess I just don't quite get it.

Once again another added responsibility of what the RT can do is added to the list, the PediaRTritian is born. Tonight it also just so happens that there is a peds patient on the floor for us to see and besides just doing my nebs and RT stuff, I am stopping down about every 2 hours to check with the RN to see how she thinks the baby is doing, what else can I do. This just frustrated me a bit that I was told that a nurse wasn't comfortable with me and now we are wanted to be MORE involved with peds patients, but I am not going out of my scope of practice.

Now that RN who wrote me up, well she quit soon after that because that peds patient stressed her out to much and took a job at a clinic where she doesn't deal with peds patient. Now was it me or just a new RN freaking out a little to much and not being comfortable with her own training. I've also been informed that there are RN's here who flat our refuse to take peds patients even to the point of calling off work if there is that possiblity. Amazing.


Pretty soon RT's will run the hospitals.

Keep it up RT's and drive on.

Here's you card....Duhh

Ring Ring (RT Department Phone ringing)

Me: Respiratory Therapy, can I help you?

Nurse: I have a patient who wants to take his MDI, he has 2 in his med cabinet but only had orders for one of them but he wants the other, can I give it to him?

Me: What is the order for?

Nurse: Albuterol 2 puff, may take on own.

Me: What is the name of the other mdi medication he has?

Nurse: Ventolin.

Me: (Laughing to self) Ok Ventolin is albuterol, it's the a commercial name of albuterol.

Nurse: Really, I've never heard of it.

Me: Yea it's like how acetaminophen is the same a Tylenol, or ibuprofen is the same as Motrin only cheaper.

Nurse: Ok I got it, so which one can I give him?

Me: (Duh look no face) Which ever one he wants.


Someday people will understand.

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.

Lets Lighten it up a bit.

Ok so that last post was a bit on the downer side so now I have to lighten up the mood a bit with a anecdote from my wife and where she works. She is a ER nurse at a much bigger hospital than mine.

Anyways I thought this was hilarious.

A nicely dressed lady in her late 30's comes in complaining of stomach pains. My wife goes in to get her history and information about the complaint and the patient goes on telling her that she and her husband drank a big the night before and started playing around and her husband decided to try something new and use a beer bottle as a ----- on her and she awoke this morning with stomach pains. So off the xray she is sent for a abdominal series and the xrays come back to show a bottle cap insider of her. Yes the husband used a unopened bottle that seemed become open, OUCH I would think and where the hell did the beer go. Ok now that isn't the funny part. So the doctor does in to do a pelvic exam to get the bottle cap out, and after the exam he comes back out to the nurses station with a Budweiser cap in a biohazard bad and exclaims:

"DAMMIT, I said I wanted a Bud Light."

True story, what a great sense of humor this doctor has. ER's are always fun to hang around at they people there are a different breed, especially night shift ER personnel.

Drive on and go have a beer.

RT's vs. RN's

I was out just searching around the old Internet when I ran across this discussion: Respiratory Therapist VS Nursing and it got me to thinking of the differences between the two. Now I know there are nurses who appreciate us RT's and on the flipside of the coin I know there are RN's who think of us as a highly paid nurses aide or trained monkey. So what are the differences between us? Who really works harder? So here I go with another list of the differences between RT's and RN's.

1. You can become a RN in either 2 or 4 years of college. Wow you there are 2 and 4 years school's for RT also, along with the 8 month route with a commitment to the Military.
2. RT's specialize, RN's don't but they can specialize.
3. RT's know a lot about the Respiratory system, RN's know a little about a lot of different systems.
4. RN's have a bunch of patients on a floor, RT's have a bunch of patients on a lot of floors. So we walk further.
5. RN's make more money, that's a given but we seem to be creeping up.
6. RN's do have more opportunities of different places to work like hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices, jail's, factories, home health, and of course as a school nurse. RT, well not so many. Mainly just hospitals and home health.
7. Everyone knows what a RN is, but not everyone knows what a RT is, we are small stealth unit like special forces.
8. RN's are stuck on a floor so a lot of times they don't really know many people in the rest of the hospital. RT's get all over the place, so we know people all over the hospital.
9. RN's get a big todo for nurses week. RT's have to do something to get RT week known.
10. RN's are the one's who call RT when the patient is going downhill fast.
11. RTs get to shove RNs out of the way to get to the head of the bed during a code. (Thanks Freadom of the RT Cave)
12. RT's don't have to talk to the family (Thanks Freadom of the RT Cave)
13. When a codes over RT can split, while the RN has to clean up. (Thanks Freadom of the RT Cave)
14. RTs have to pay more than twice as much for their license, at least in Michigan, (Thanks Freadom of the RT Cave) and in Illinois and Wisconsin which is cheaper than Illinois.
    

Ok this is mainly just for fun and that's just a short list off the top of my head. Overall nurses work hard and so do RT's, just in different ways and of course both are needed to make the hospital run smoothly. My wife is a ER nurse and I have utmost respect for her as a ER nurse because I know the crap they deal with and the disturbing things they see. All in all it takes a certain type of person to be either a RT or a RN, but RT's don't let those "high on their horse" RN's talk down to you like we are a hired hand and they are the ones in charge. Sorry a little rant there, could be from running into a certain type of RN, or not.

Anyways...

Drive on RT's and Happy Respiratory Therapy Week.