junior, schmunior

i was concerned when i left for work last night that it was going to be hellish, owing to the fact that i had only slept 3 hours after my previous nightshift, it was friday night, it was friday night, it was friday night.

scheduling is a crazy thing. Because of contract requirements, myself and another nurse were supernumerary last night. We had a whole herd of RNs! The senior nurse thought it would be a good idea for me to hang out in emerg last night, so off i went to shadow another "junior" nurse. Nothing like 2 newbies running the place. Both of us had taken time off in the past few months and didnt know how any of the new forms worked. But we had a really good doctor on call (he even took an unofficial, meaning i didnt have to fill out an emerg form, look at my sore wrist!) And for a friday night, it was pretty darn good. We had a stab wound! I didnt get a close look at the wound itself because buddy didnt need sutures. I told the doctor i was disappointed. He was too. We both really like sutures. He's promised to call me if he ever has any when i'm working. woo! sutures!

The night was relatively calm in the end and we had time to sit around chatting and playing cards. There were 4 of us "junior" nurses and one "senior" nurse last night. There's been a lot of talk recently about restricting junior nurses. We had a really nice discussion on that. I definitely appreciated the senior nurse asking for our opinion. Everyone talks and makes decisions about us, without us. We have less experience because no one will provide us with supportive opportunities to gain experience. They are fostering our dependence. I think its fair that we should not want to be forced to work emerg independently, particularly at night when we alone are responsible for triaging patients and sending level 3 and 4s out to the next hospital. Maybe they should think about buddy shifts in emerg. But they wont because we dont have enough nurses and all the "experienced" ones are in shitty moods because we've been working extra these past few months to allow doctors to sleep more and to leave less work for the front office. We've been supporting the doctors, but have we been supporting each other?

And there was a baby. She was born the previous day but we had been too busy thursday night for me to hold her. I got to hold her last night while we played cards. For some reason, we all found her particularly cute. And my coworkers kept telling me how good she looked on me!
Babies look good on me!
woo!
no, i am not wanting a baby.
It did spark them to ask, again, when I'm going to get a boyfriend. One nurse figures its about time since i'm got a full-time job and an apartment and i've been in town nearly a year. Ugh. People.