the pungent mix of bodily fluids and industrial-strength chemicals. You’ll hear people calling out in distress or confusion, and sometimes their cries go unanswered. Like a prison or a battlefield, the hospital is every bit as raw and extreme. You will be reminded that human suffering is close at hand; you don’t have to travel to faraway places to find it.
I feel right at home here. It’s my comfort zone. Hospitals are my second home; they’re in my blood. As a child, I accompanied my parents to their numerous doctors’ appointments. As a teenager, I spent my summers as a volunteer “candy striper.” Years later, I resurfaced as a student nurse, and for the past twenty-eight years, I’ve been showing up, taking care of patients, and still trying to figure out the mysteries of this world, as a nurse.
I have stayed the course, working during the profligate 1980s, laid off suddenly in the me an, restructuring 1990s, when there was no “job security” and the joke was, “Don’t bring a lunch.” Eventually, I was rehired to do the same job and have remained employed here throughout these sober, downsizing times. Because I’ve been in it so long, I’m often asked the question: What has changed?
A lot.
Back when I was a teenager spending summer vacations in hospitals, strolling the wards, pushing a blue cart filled with books and magazines that I handed out to patients, I would stop to sit on the edge of their beds to chat and joke around. It’s a different reality now. There’s a huge shift. These days, hospital patients are not reading novels. They’re too sick. Patients who are deemed “stable” or sometimes merely partially recovered are sent home to be cared for there – or not. The ones who remain in hospital have complicated, chronic medical issues, are unstable, often older, and need a great deal of complex nursing care. They have multiple IVS , are on oxygen, many have wounds and are receiving invasive treatments. (I have heard of hospitals in the United States that offer gourmet meals and spa treatments in order to improve “patient satisfaction.” Want my advice? If you are well enough to enjoy such things, stay home.)
People are in the hospital because they need nursing care, and too often there aren’t enough nurses to do the job properly. We allknow of cases of patients who needed more nursing care than they received. “I rang the call bell and no one came.” “I didn’t see a nurse all day or night.” Then there are worse tales of insufficient monitoring or inattention to serious problems.
All true, but there is one relatively new innovation that offers me a great deal of comfort as a soon-to-be patient. It’s the ICU Rapid Response Team, now a standard feature in most hospitals. On-call twenty-four hours a day, this mobile “SWAT team” covers the entire hospital, scouting out high-risk or deteriorating patients. If they are alerted quickly to a patient in need and can get there during the crucial “golden hour,” as it is called in the scientific literature, treatment is most effective. An ICU nurse is the first responder to arrive and assess the situation. Then, in consultation with a physician and other members of the team, the nurse administers oxygen, fluids, takes blood work, arranges for X-rays, and starts medications. My friend Stephanie, who’s on the team, jokingly calls it the “ICU Roadshow.” Another friend who’s on the team, Janet, says, “it allows us to light a fire under the situation to get things moving along faster.” What it does is bring the ICU to patients so that they might not need to come to the ICU . In a way, the Rapid Response Team is like a “virtual ICU” because it’s about the people and their expertise, not the place or its equipment. The ICU is a way of doing things.
I have seen the results of the Rapid Response Team and have read the reports: they are catching problems early, preventing mishaps, saving lives, and reducing ICU
I feel right at home here. It’s my comfort zone. Hospitals are my second home; they’re in my blood. As a child, I accompanied my parents to their numerous doctors’ appointments. As a teenager, I spent my summers as a volunteer “candy striper.” Years later, I resurfaced as a student nurse, and for the past twenty-eight years, I’ve been showing up, taking care of patients, and still trying to figure out the mysteries of this world, as a nurse.
I have stayed the course, working during the profligate 1980s, laid off suddenly in the me an, restructuring 1990s, when there was no “job security” and the joke was, “Don’t bring a lunch.” Eventually, I was rehired to do the same job and have remained employed here throughout these sober, downsizing times. Because I’ve been in it so long, I’m often asked the question: What has changed?
A lot.
Back when I was a teenager spending summer vacations in hospitals, strolling the wards, pushing a blue cart filled with books and magazines that I handed out to patients, I would stop to sit on the edge of their beds to chat and joke around. It’s a different reality now. There’s a huge shift. These days, hospital patients are not reading novels. They’re too sick. Patients who are deemed “stable” or sometimes merely partially recovered are sent home to be cared for there – or not. The ones who remain in hospital have complicated, chronic medical issues, are unstable, often older, and need a great deal of complex nursing care. They have multiple IVS , are on oxygen, many have wounds and are receiving invasive treatments. (I have heard of hospitals in the United States that offer gourmet meals and spa treatments in order to improve “patient satisfaction.” Want my advice? If you are well enough to enjoy such things, stay home.)
People are in the hospital because they need nursing care, and too often there aren’t enough nurses to do the job properly. We allknow of cases of patients who needed more nursing care than they received. “I rang the call bell and no one came.” “I didn’t see a nurse all day or night.” Then there are worse tales of insufficient monitoring or inattention to serious problems.
All true, but there is one relatively new innovation that offers me a great deal of comfort as a soon-to-be patient. It’s the ICU Rapid Response Team, now a standard feature in most hospitals. On-call twenty-four hours a day, this mobile “SWAT team” covers the entire hospital, scouting out high-risk or deteriorating patients. If they are alerted quickly to a patient in need and can get there during the crucial “golden hour,” as it is called in the scientific literature, treatment is most effective. An ICU nurse is the first responder to arrive and assess the situation. Then, in consultation with a physician and other members of the team, the nurse administers oxygen, fluids, takes blood work, arranges for X-rays, and starts medications. My friend Stephanie, who’s on the team, jokingly calls it the “ICU Roadshow.” Another friend who’s on the team, Janet, says, “it allows us to light a fire under the situation to get things moving along faster.” What it does is bring the ICU to patients so that they might not need to come to the ICU . In a way, the Rapid Response Team is like a “virtual ICU” because it’s about the people and their expertise, not the place or its equipment. The ICU is a way of doing things.
I have seen the results of the Rapid Response Team and have read the reports: they are catching problems early, preventing mishaps, saving lives, and reducing ICU
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