Feeling supported
It’s been a while (!) but after almost eight months of not blogging about nursing, I was finally inspired to put finger to keyboard and write about an experience I had a few weeks ago.
I’m still working on the intensive care unit, and I still enjoy it (barring the endless night shifts of course!) but was starting to feel a bit isolated in my work. I’m not the new nurse anymore, infact there have been several new nurses started since I did, and so I am very much left to my own devices in my work. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that, and am pleased that I am trusted to be left alone with even the most poorly of patients, but every now and then you need to feel supported.
That was the exact feeling I got the other week.
My patient had been extubated (his ‘breathing tube’ had been removed) 48 hours previously, and I had been working with him for the previous three night shifts (they never end!) His first night without his ET (endo tracheal) tube went well. He still had a lot of secretions on his chest, but he was young and he was coughing them out well.
His second day hadn’t gone so well, and he was very tired, and not coughing (other than to spit at people) and when I listened to his chest he sounded as though he was drowning. I informed the doctors of this, who said to “encourage deep breathing and coughing” - this was at 8:15pm.
Come 2:30am there was no improvement and we had made the decision to re-intubate. A decision which would have been so much easier to realise at 8:15pm! However, as the patient began to fight against myself and the junior Registrar who had taken the task on, my colleagues showed me just how supported I really am.
Not one, but three other nurses from around the unit appeared to assist with the intubation, and the situation was managed as well as if it had been the middle of the day, and not the middle of the night. By 3:30am my patient was ventilated and after seemingly endless suction (of the secretions on his chest, mechanically) he no longer sounded as though he was drowning. My colleagues returned to their patients and my faith was restored in all those I work with.
