How many RN's does it take to...

Had a really sick patient last week who was very unsteady on her feet. She had TPN, a Power PICC, and was on 5L of O2. She also had to be transfused w/ a HGB of 7.1. It was all she could do to get up and make it to the bathroom. Had an interesting moment:

After getting her up and into the bathroom at one point, I quickly changed her linens, which meant my putting her bed in high position so as not to strain my back. She waited patiently for me to get her back up and out of the bathroom, and I said:

"Ok, lets get you back into bed--it's all nice and clean."

I turn to lower the bed and it won't go down--it will go up, though, and raises to be about 5 feet in the air. All kinds of "lock" lights are blinking, but I can't get the bed to unlock for anything. I turn to patient:

"Well, we will have to get you into a chair while I go find the nurse and try to figure this bed out."

Patient tells me she has had issues with the bed as well. Get patient into chair, go find RN, she comes to the room and also can't figure bed out. At this point, it is about 5.5 feet off the ground and at its highest position. I turn to patient, and with a deadpan face, say:

"I am sorry ma'am, but we are going to have to ask you to get up, walk to the other side of the room, and run and make a flying leap into your bed."

Nurse looks at me in horror, patient looks at her IV pole in horror, and it takes them a minute to realize I am joking--they both crack up and patient laughs so hard she starts to cry. I go get a tech (and techs know EVERYTHING, so this was a good nursing intervention) and she shows us that you have to hold down three buttons all at once to get the bed down.

Get patient back in bed and all is well.

Other highlights of clinical: had a doc snip at me (jerk), had a horrible time with the pyxis and basically decided that I hate computer charting. Oh, and did 8 hrs worth of paperwork and a teaching project. Have never been so tired in my life and almost threw in the towel, again. Thankfully my MIL and husband talked me through it--and my classmates are all in the same boat...

Back to the books.