15.
“Nurse here. Per usual, I was being overworked. I had over nine patients in the ER. One patient had cancer and hadn’t been feeling well. The doctor insisted he was fine. However, just to be safe, I continued to regularly check in on him as he was chilling in a chair in the hallway. He started complaining of feeling super tired and off. His daughter (who also was a doctor) kind of said something along the lines of ‘You’ve had a stressful day, dad. We will get you home once the doctor discharges you.’ Just to cover my ass, I took his vitals. His blood pressure was 70s/40s.”
“I had a critical care room open and immediately rolled him in there, calling out to the doctor that something was wrong; I could just feel it. The charge nurse got mad when I told her he needed that room (she didn’t like that I was a travel nurse calling the shots, but I didn’t care).
The doctor felt I was overreacting, but they repeated my vitals and did a Stat scan. The guy was bleeding internally (I can’t remember full details now), and they found metastases to his spinal cord.
We were able to stabilize and ship him to a bigger hospital. That irritated ER doctor thanked me later and said if that guy went home, he most likely would have died that night. It felt really, really good. All because I listened to my patient and my gut and didn’t let the stress of over nine patients cloud my judgment.”
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