As boring as it may be, it's my life. You live life and learn as you go along. So hop into my life and enjoy the ride! (You don't want to forget to buckle up, sometimes it's one heck of a bumpy ride!)

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Cracking under pressure

I NEVER crack under pressure, ever! I'm not trying to gloat or anything, but I'm great under pressure. Put me in a situation where I have to think on my feet and I can do it without batting an eye. Except tonight!!!!!!
I don't know what happened. I don't know if it's because I have so much on my mind, I didn't take my meds today, or simply because I haven't been in the NICU for awhile and had to set up equipment. But man did I feel stupid!!!!!!!

I get a call that they needed two CPAP's for twins. No problem, day shift had ordered two today and they came this evening. (Third set of twins in two days) I hadn't gotten around to setting them up, so I grabbed one and my co-worker grabbed another and we scrambled around putting all the parts on it that they needed. Up to the NICU we go ...

One of the twins was doing just fine, didn't need the CPAP so I took mine to the baby that did. I plugged everything in and started putting on the hat and one of the nurses looked at me and said, "ummmm, that's upside down". I felt like a total and complete moron! So I turn it around and put it on the right way ... just to find out I needed a bigger size!! Usually I'm good at judging those, but nope! So I got the other and stuck it on. I then put the little prongs on the end of the circuit and stood waiting for the nurse to get an IV in. The lovely nurse that had told me the hat was upside down looked at me and said did you put prongs on that and I felt like saying, no does it need it ... but bit my tongue and said yup, it's ready to go, just waiting for that line to go in. (The baby was stable, CPAP wasn't a huge issue at the moment.) She grabbed it from me and started putting it on the baby. Whatever! I go to the head of the bed to find only one prong in one nare ... no wonder I could hear air whooshing around and the alarms were going crazy!! I fixed it, reset the alarms then started taking notes for myself.

Throughout what usually would be a no brainer for me, I felt like I knew NOTHING. I felt like everyone there was looking at me thinking does she know what she's doing??? Okay, so I'm new to the hospital and they don't know me up there. I'll give them that. But I know what I'm doing, I've put TONS of CPAPs on babies throughout my career as a respiratory therapist. I just don't know what happened tonight. I just hope it doesn't happen again!!!!!!!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trust me Abby.. they've made mistakes..... as you said, they don't know you yet, as you don't know them.... you just say, "duh, I had a brain fart" and move on...

9:47 AM

 

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