Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Least Favorite Words

The four words I absolutely dread hearing come from the mouth of a patient are (in this particular order):
It could just be an anxiety attack or pain from an injury (shoulder or rib fractures to name a couple) but it also might be a freakin' heart attack, y'all. It's happened to me a few times already, and what follows that evil utterance is a barrage of tests which include:
1. EKG (which you hook up in a nonchalant manner to give your patient the impression that you do this all the time at 3:00 am)
2. Troponin labs (which will then have to be repeated every few hours, oh and it's fun to draw someone's blood under stressful circumstances when you're a new nurse and not a great phlebotomist so far)
3. Chest x-ray (also totally normal at 3:00 am)
4. You peeing your pants a little because you're afraid they actually are having a heart attack and that they just might code on you (#4 does not require an order from a doctor).

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