Sucking Pond Water

Every so often we plan a potluck buffet on our weekends on in the ER. It seems that every time we do this we have a hellacious day and we don't even get a chance to take a break anyway. Well, this weekend was no different. It started busy and got busier. At one point we were on diversion, but that didn't stop the codes coming in.

I had several admissions but the floors were trying to hold off on taking them, not for the patients sakes, but for the nurses who were busy too. We fax report to the floors and give them 20 minutes before we bring the patients up. Which is a lot more than the report we get from ambulances who are '3-5 minutes out with patient having crushing chest pain, hypotension, ekg showing ST elevation and runs of V-tach'. Well, everytime I brought a patient upstairs yesterday not only was the bed not turned down, but the nurses were not coming to accept the patient, and giving me a hard time about having to take the patient. Meanwhile down in the ER I am getting other patients put into the rooms where my admissions just left.

The LNA on Tele had the nerve to say to me, 'OH, you ER people always act like you are so busy.' This was 4pm, I had been working since 0630 and we hadn't even had lunch. So, I asked her....'Have you guys had lunch, cause we haven't.' She came right out and called me a liar, and said she had seen us all in the cafeteria. I told her she was hallucinating. God, that pisses me off. My feet still hurt today, we never did get lunch and I don't get paid for working through lunch because 'state law says they have to give us a break so we can't pay you for it' even though we work through it pretty often!