Jesus. What a bloody shift.
I love working in ICU but I have doubts about my ability to be of any use there. Last night, for example, I was looking after 2 patients for a short period. I gave one of them a small amount of sedative to prevent her from self extubating. The moment my back was turned what did she do? Yep, there she was with most of her ET tube in her hand and the last few inches sat in her mouth. Ventilator alarming and my heart sinking. This was my first experience of someone self extubating and of course I knew fuck all as to what to do first. Luckily one of the other nurses grabbed the waters bag and started bagging her, another one did a blood gas and I tried to help as best I could. Which to be fair was not a lot. *sigh* So anyway, to cut a long story short the doctor came in looked at the blood gas results, checked the patient and told us that she appeared to be doing okay and her results were good and to keep her on a non invasive mask.
Pretty much everyone there had had some experience of patients self extubating and were really cool about it. Mostly took the piss out of me breaking patients. I just felt terribly guilty about it. But I suppose it was going to happen sooner or later and it was better it was someone who was going to be extubated later that day.
Yet another learning experience.
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