A Letter to My Nemice

Dear On-Call Resident from Sunday Night,

Normally, I ignore your larger than life attitude and pompous arrogance. However, after Sunday night, you really should rethink how you treat the nurses. We're human too.

When I paged you the first time and you didn't call back, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. This a very busy ICU and we have lots of sick patients. When I paged you the second time and you didn't call back, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, I knew there was an admission in the ER. When I paged you the third time via text page to relay my message that Ms. L's complaints of pain at her IJ removal site, that she couldn't move her neck, and it was painful to the touch and you STILL didn't call me back...I started to get annoyed. Sorry sister, I went over your head and paged the fellow. Lucky for you, she was tagging along on your little adventures and didn't get right back to me.

I really do not appreciate the fact that when I finally saw you on the floor, 45 minutes after the 3rd page, and approached you about seeing my patient that you barked at me, "I'll get to it." Have you not paid any attention to SBAR. A time frame would have been nice. Lucky for you, I bit my tongue and repeated, "This patient needs to be seen now. I've been paging you for almost 3 hours. She is in excrutiang pain and it's affecting her vital signs. She's tachycardic and hypertensive and diaphoretic. Thankyouverymuch."

Your throwing of the pen across the counter and slamming of the papers was quite unnecessary. Your curt tone and rough "assessment" of my patient was uncalled for. When she flinched before you even touched her neck, you should have backed off, not dove right in to make the woman scream. Your thought that, "She's got some phlebitis. Nothing I can do for it tonight, she's already anti-coagualted." Wasn't that helpfull. As you went about your business, I kept an eye on you. I know that when I paged you again two hours later to report the patient was having some minor mental status changes, that you were sitting at the computer. You should have come to see the patient when you got up before you decided to go bronch Mr. S. In case you were wondering, I most certainly did page you three times while you were in with Mr. S. I will not be ignored!

When the patients lab values came back at 4am (did I mention that this patient was an extremely hard stick but that I was able to get blood myself, without paging you to do an arterial stick?!?!?) and her WBC count had jumped from 11.5 to 17.5 and I relayed this message onto you and you replied, "Yeah. So. It's 4am I haven't looked at lab values yet." THAT WASN'T COOL. Given this patients current condition and her history, you should have been in that room faster than lighting. I'm really happy that when you finally went in to assess the patient, after I followed you around like a lost puppy dog for 15 minutes, and you then touched the site and Goren puss came oozing out that I was standing right there to comment, "Phelebitis, hunh?" Boy did that comment feel good! Sorry it was inconvenient for you that you now had to culture the patient but maybe you should have thought about that hours ago when I first brought this to your attention.

I had to bite my tongue hard when you bitched and moaned about now having "another thing to do." Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't this your job? Oh yeah, that's right, my error. Someone made you take the MCAT's, apply to medical school, complete 4 years of medical school, apply to a residency program, and become a doctor. Seriously lady, get a grip.

after a quick prayer to the IV God's I managed to get an IV in this ladies arm so she could get her STAT dose of antibiotics. Did I gloat to you? NO.

I found it ironic that during AM rounds with the fellow you provided a beautiful narrative of the nights events...perfectly describing what YOU did, what YOU noticed, what YOU caught...weren't you the one who didn't even want to assess the patient?

So can you explain to me why you did nothing but complain about "the nurses" all night. Oh and FYI, I heard when you said, "The one with glasses (me)... She's ridiculously demanding and just doesn't get it. She couldn't. She's just a nurse". But I DO GET IT! I think you don't. Yes, I am a nurse and I'm not disputing that fact. However, I think you need to realize something. I'm not some dumb ass who says stuff to hear myself speak. Look lady, I've got an Ivy League education, perhaps better than your no-name medical school education, and I've had enough of your BS.

Do me a favor, actually two of them. First, shut up! Then, grow up! We're all here for the good of the patients, but if that's too much for you, I've got some bad news...you just wasted $250,000 on an education that isn't going to lead to a career.

Signed,
Nurse Kelly
(better thought of by you as "the relentless dumbass who clearly identified what was wrong with the patient hours before you even looked at the patient but isn't capable of making recommendations because she's just a nurse")