Dragonfly Photography

The date is October 5th!

So finally, we have set a date to go! It will be October 5th, which is only two and a half months away! Now we can plan and organize and freak out a little…..We met at Starbucks yesterday after my shift and man, we are ready to go!

This decision comes at a great time, since I really have a bad case of burn out at work. One of the reasons is frustration with my management (what’s new) and the feeling of hitting a brick wall. Maybe because management seems so uncaring and is not visible in the ER, especially when we are slammed. The icing on the cake is then to get an email where it states that we can easily run a part of the ER with less nurses…I guess the no lunch break,no bathroom break, and the feeling that you may have forgotten something important when finally leaving is okay. My hospital is extremely focused on patient care satisfaction. This means for management that we have to go in a patients room every hour and write on a piece of paper that we were there…and they do not seem to understand that most of the time things are so busy that this ’rounding’ does not work in an ER. On a regular floor, yes, maybe. In an ER, no. But anything we as staff bring to management’s attention is being responded to with the suggestion: if you cannot handle it, you need to find a new job. Or, my favorite: Other hospitals ER’s have one nurse for 15 patients…. Wow, sucks to work there I guess. Also reminds me of when I was a kid and wanted something and would say: so-and-so has all these things and I want it too, and the answer would be, but you are not so-and-so….I guess my burn out started after a staff meeting were we as a group were asked what made us unhappy. Now I have a big mouth and even though it has gotten me in trouble numerous times, I do not seem to learn…. So I told my nurse manager what bothered me. Now this is my opinion, and mine alone. One of my issues at the time was that my shifts would change every schedule. With this I mean, one schedule they were 9AM to 9PM, the next schedule 8AM to 8PM , etc. Did not like this at all, just wanted to come to work at 7 in the morning and leave at 7 at night. Since I do have a life outside of work…. Also did not really help night shift to have three nurses leave an hour after they started, usually when it is rather busy. But her response to me was, in front of all my co workers, that if I could not deal with this to find another job. Which to me is just so demotivating to hear, and kind of insulting. Do not ask for an opinion if you do not want to hear one…..and apparently she really do not want to know what made us unhappy.. Now everybody in my ER has been quite unhappy lately. And by lately I mean since we have a new nurse manager. She interviewed quite well, made a lot of sense but I guess she left all these good plans at her old job. And unhappy shines through, just like happiness does.

Now to go back to the whole patient satisfaction obsession in my hospital… I am all for giving the best care possible. That’s what I do. The problem is that a lot of the time we are understaffed. That means that when you come in with a stubbed toe or back pain for 6 months you are not going to be seen very quickly. Your nurse will not be in your room a lot…And these are the people that are the least satisfied with our care. Because they have to wait longer since you do jump to the beginning of the line when you do not breathe or do not have a heart rate, are having a heart attack, stroke or limbs broken or not attached to your body anymore. Oh, and car accidents go before congestion or pregnancy tests too…. Now I may not have six degrees behind my name but I have been a nurse for a while now. I have a very simple solution to increase patient satisfaction. Also do not need $500,000 to tell you this, although it would be nice. (It would cover all the costs to go to Tanzania with some left over money to donate to Madaktari) Here it comes! Improve your employee satisfaction and guess what????? Nurses and techs and secretaries will come to work and actually want to do the best they can!!!! WOW!!! Patients will notice that we do have a good working unit and will rate us as being one of the best.

But enough about my frustrations with my job, although it does help to vent=)

Tanzania is coming a lot closer not! Stuff to do, things to research and shots to get…. Talking about shots…total price without someone actually giving them to you is almost $700. Yikes. But unfortunately necessary unless I would like to get yellow fever (although yellow is one of my favorite colors…) or become typhoid Mary. Rabies also is not on my lists of things to get before I die so I guess I’ll get those shots too, but was wondering if this would be cheaper at my vet. Hopefully there is a way to get these vaccines against cost price, I do know enough nurses that can give me the shots..

Then to find an affordable ticket. The cheapest so far is $1100. Hopefully I will be able to use my frequent flyer miles, but I have heard Delta has become very strict with expiration dates.

The plan for the three of us that are going is to set up a plan. One of the main things to do is to set up a CPR program, since this is something that seems to be very necessary. So I will become a BLS instructor before we go. For the non-healthcare people that read this, BLS stands for basic life support. We have to come up with a plan and schedule and one or two dummies to take with us and leave there. Our goal is to train people to teach CPR. Guess I have to learn to count in Swahili…  One of the other things we need to do is to make an inventory of stuff that is already donated and what it needs to function. For instance, there are monitors but no ECG cables to go with them. So lots of stuff to do once we get there.

And getting there is the next thing to work on=)