Greetings friends!
I don’t know if you realize it but there are a lot of unique individuals in this world. Now, most of the time, I would intend that in a good way. However, after some of the recent experiences I have had…perhaps I should rethink what I really mean!
For example, just the other day, an individual walked up to the front desk in the ER where I work and plainly state: “I am in a coma, and I need to see a doctor!” Dude, you're walking and talking. Believe me when I say, you are most definitely not in a come! Nevertheless, when that is one of the first things you hear as you start your work day, you know it may just turn out to be an interesting day. The lady that calls 911 for a hangnail, the man that walks in to the ER and demands to be seen because “I haven’t been able to poop all afternoon,” or the patient that wants to detox from drugs for the 654th time but just took meth 42 seconds before walking through the door…these are the individuals that may just be a little “unique” in a completely different kind of way!
That is not what emergency nursing is really all about, though. Emergency nursing is having a mother run through the front door, holding a blue baby, rushing the mother back, and after working quickly, hearing that baby take a deep breath and begin to scream. A screaming baby is a living baby. Emergency nursing is having a farmer bring in his son after he was kicked in the head by the cow, and he is unable to breathe because of all the blood and broken bones, but after intubation (placing of a breathing tube), he is breathing again. Emergency nursing is to treat a pregnant mother that was hit by a car by performing an emergency C-section and performing a thoracotomy for cardiac massage at the exact same time and having mother and baby leave the ER alive to go to surgery and the ICU respectively. Emergency nursing is to be there for the person that is so sick that they are unable to help themselves. It is to be able to either help that individual and send them back out completely well or stabilize them enough for them to be able to go to surgery or the ICU.
My job is to be there when you show up, or someone brings you in, and you have no one else that you can turn to for medical help. It is my job, and the job of my teammates, to patch you up enough to go home, stabilize you enough for surgery, or flat-out get you back from the grasp death to go on and recover in the ICU.
Do I love my job? Absolutely! Do the “unique” people make it interesting? No doubt about it! Am I in it for the long haul? You better believe it!
‘Till next time!
Trauma Nurse