Monday, August 03, 2015

You Deserve a Cookie!

I will freely admit that I am bitterly cynical and despairing of seeing much good in most of mankind. But I am neither heartless nor hopeless. My night nurse job in the emergency vet clinic has shown me that again and again. 

With only two people awake most of the night (the vet is usually asleep upstairs), we two nurses keep constant track of each other. The clinic is a large one and just about any kind of random shit could happen, from something as trivial as needing help holding a cat to get a temperature to a 9-1-1 call to the police to deal with a belligerent and possibly drug-addled client threatening physical violence to us. In other words, I know far too much about my colleague's bathroom habits ("gotta pee, be right back"). Still, most of the time the silence and the darkened rooms can easily lead you to feel that you are completely alone.

As a result, I am often caught by my co-workers chirping silly nonsense to animals as I perform this or that procedure: "okay, little bit, let's get this catheter sorted so we can go out for a walk"; "sorry, honey bunny, I've got to poke you in the bum"; "hold still, you crazed beast, I've got to shove this down your throat". I keep telling them, tease me as much as you want, I'm not going to stop. So, not heartless. We do the best we can for the weakest amongst us. And if silly chatter gets me there, well, piss off with the teasing.

The night nurse supervisor is scheduled to leave an hour before I do, so I bridge the gap between the night and the day ICU staff. Once the night supervisor rounds the day ICU supervisor on current patients, which also happens about the same time that the vet comes back downstairs, I alternate my focus between the day ICU nurse and the doctor.

It's my personal practice to complete pre-assigned patient care tasks first, then ask the day nurse or doctor how I can help them. I explicitly say, what can I do for you? They never turn this offer down. There is always something that needs to be done, some changes in treatment plans that need to be recorded and implemented, new blood to be drawn, additional drugs to be given. So, not hopeless. I know that they are going to have the best interests of the animal and client in mind. We are a team trying to make our tiny corner of the world a little better. If there is something I can do, then I need to do it.

In short, despite my personal curmudgeonly perspective, I try my best to support my team and to care for the animals in equal measure.

The clinic I work for is large and has many employees. The management of the clinic provides these slips of papers called "cookies". You can fill them out for any employee, describing some special thing that they did that you want to call special attention to. I have done so several times for one nurse in particular that has spent a lot of time training me. I thought we were supposed to slip them into the locked box labeled "cookies", which is what I did. Turns out another common practice is to give the filled-out slips to that employee, who can choose to put them in the locked box or not. 

Here's a cookie recently given to me by a day ICU nurse whom I respect:



Okay, I have to admit, I'm a sucker for this. Of course more money in my paycheck would be better than a slip of paper. But to know directly from my co-worker that she finds me helpful certainly makes me feel invested and rewarded.

In other news, the other night I finally achieved my first successful hind-leg blood draw from the saphenous vein (scroll down for pics of the saphenous vein; the cephalic vein is usually where the IV catheter is placed). If you have a short-coated dog, you can see the saphenous vein crossing the outside of their hind leg just above their ankle (it's also there in cats, but harder to see unless you hold the vein off). Okay, it was a relatively calm Doberman bitch, so it wasn't like I could miss the damned thing. Still, I had tried this blood draw on three other dogs and failed. She was standing so the angle for the needle was a bit funky. Still, I got it in one poke! I was so pleased. Blood, beautiful venous blood!




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