How not to end a day of work

A code is a medical emergency in the hospital. A code is an extremely stressful situation which requires action. A code is not something you want to be in on your second day of orientation at a new hospital. But you can’t always get what you want. I now have survived my first code as a nurse. As a patient care assistant you don’t really have to do anything in a code once nurses and doctors are there. When you are a nurse there is a lot of stuff you have to do. Get meds out, start and IV, and activate the emergency system. I have never had to do any of these things.

Yesterday went I went into my patient’s room I found an aid standing over the unit secretary who had just collapsed and was having a major asthma attack. Nurses and doctors started coming out of the wood work. “Quick go get albutorol and IV solumedrol out of the pixis.” I’m not even comfortable yet with getting meds out of the pixis when I have the order right in front of me. Having to just get them out is kind of scary. I was asked to put an IV in. I’ve never put an IV in someone except in the skills lab. I paged the IV team. I ended up taking the secretary down to the ER in the bed that she had been lifted into. It was a stressful way to end my second day of orientation.