I Need a Gun

Today was awful. I worked in hyper-speed for the first two hours, attended six straight meetings, then pulled my HAIR out as we aligned the standing order sets for stroke. All five of them. In the fine tooth-combing we did, we found such inconsistencies as "Do not insert foley cath" and two pages later, it would say "Insert foley cath or straight cath."

Huh?

And then it would say "NPO until swallow studies and speech evaluation" and then "administer soft diet at next meal."

Double huh?

"Call physician if blood glucose is greater than 150 mg/dl x 2 consecutive or less than 70 mg/dl" and "call physician if blood glucose is greater than 140 mg/dl or less than 50 mg/dl."

You get the idea.

It just got slap-happy as me, Peppermint Patty (CV Service Line Director), the two Nursing Directors, and the Nurse Educator laughed about the stupidest inconsistencies. And then Patty was organizing some nursing assessment items by bullet point. She said "Bullet point here!...Bullet...Bullet...[pause]..."

She then asked, "Okay, three bullets and now what do we need?"

I suggested, "A gun?"

And with that, we laughed until we finished the Mocha Starbucks and chocolate-covered pretzels! We stayed so late that Security had to escort us out of the hospital because we left after the main entrance had closed.