Red Bull Party

I attended my first Red Bull party today.

Everyone (it seemed like everyone) was dragging today. The combination of 198 nearly-consecutive days of low-hanging clouds, a Monday, the Ides of March, and the time change wiped out the energy levels of everyone in the hospital. It was like we all had a coordinated jet lag experience.

I ran four straight hours of stroke meetings today, beginning with the neurologists. We had a one-hour meeting scheduled and when it started to approach one hour and 50 minutes, I cut off the conversation and promised to schedule a follow-up meeting so they could continue their whining, I mean, conversation. The staff neurologists do not get together that often (that's code for, they pretty much hate each other) and when locked in one room to approve stroke treatment orders, they start discussing the specifics of American Academy of Neurology guidelines (and even then, they can't agree on how to interpret the guidelines).

It was crazy. They kept talking over each other (picture nine Type AA personalities in one room) and the conversation spun around highly-technical terms of neurosurgical origin. It's tough to moderate a conversation when you might as well be sitting at a table in ancient Jerusalem, listening to archaic Arabic dialects. Actually, I felt like the kid at the dinner table who gets the gist of the parents' conversation but has no idea what they're really talking about. Thankfully, Dr. Brain stepped up with her beautiful leadership and squashed the argumentation. Dr. Brain is now on my softball team and apparently, she and I are going to go play catch in the hospital parking lot when it warms up outside.

Dr. Brain was the exception, kindness-wise. Two of the neurologists should give up their practices and become lawyers. They were that good at arguing. So after moderating a lengthy (and loud) discourse among the unique neurology personalities and trying to get my own agenda's questions answered, my brain was mush by noon. More accurately, I felt like I had my own transient ischemic attack and should have received intra-arterial tissue plasminogen activator to unclog my brain. I must have looked cross-eyed because even Nurse Jackie asked me if I developed an intracerebral hemorrhage.

Regardless, the meeting was a fruitful success and ALL the neurologists energetically discussed the stroke program! Hospital programs *always* fizzle if you don't have physician champions.

After a stroke progress meeting with the Cardiovascular Line Director (Peppermint Patty) and CNO, I marched over to the Education department to give my $.02 on the patient education materials that St. Fozzie's will roll out to discharged patients. That was an easy decision, but the director gave me a list of nursing departments who have not been compliant on their educational requirements for stroke certification.

I tweaked this Spreadsheet of Shame and immediately corralled Nurse Jackie for her input and insight. The stroke program go-live must be postponed for one month because the educational aspect is not complete. You cannot implement new order sets until you have taught the new order sets. We also have everyone in the house completing the NIH Stroke Scale, a four-hour online training module. It's lengthy and throw in a packed average-daily census, we're having a rough time getting all these nurses certified.

Sigh.

I vented to Peppermint Patty about this and her comment was, "Nothing has ever happened this fast at St. Fozzie's. Be amazed you got this far this quickly." In a similar vein, Edison wandered by my office today and congratulated me on leaping over the bureaucratic hurdles so quickly. The program's status seems slow to me; to others, it's progressing faster than they ever expected.

At 3pm, I found myself in the Physician Liasion's office, gulping down copious amounts of Red Bull. She keeps a case in there (*yeah!*) and while we planned two of tomorrow's meetings, two others stopped by for Red Bull drinks.

St. Fozzie's saw it's first Red Bull Party in Administration today. Seasonal-affect-Monday-Ides-of-March-jetlag will do that to you!