Hell must have frozen over. They sent me a staff nurse!

But it was only for one shift.

I was the only trained for 25 medical patients and couldn't do it alone. She was from SCBU. SCBU is the special care baby unit or neonatal intensive care to our American friends. It was the only place the site manager could pull a staff nurse from. I had more than a few patients on controlled drugs and these drugs cannot be accessed without a second staff nurse. I needed an RN.

The woman hadn't done adult ward nursing since she trained in the Crimea.

So I gave her the three freaking out Alcohol detoxers, the violent mental health patient arguing with the bed (still waiting and waiting for days to see the mental health people, dumped in medicine meantime), the pancreatitis who couldn't get a bed in ITU, the COPDer who was going down the tubes and the wanderer with dementia*. Hey that's only a small group of patients! I took the other 18.

I'm just kidding. I took them all and put her to work with the 2 HCA's. At least she was there to do the controlled drugs with me. Nice woman anyway. There were 2 staff nurses and 2 HCA's with the addition of the nice SCBU nurse.

They got me all excited thinking that I was going to get a second staff nurse to take the other team of patients. Then I find out she was from SCBU. It felt like getting coal in my stocking on Christmas morning.

I guess this was preferable to me getting sent to SCBU. I'd run away from there screaming.

I got through the shift with my sense of humour intact. Lucky me it was only an 8 hour shift and I got out of there 10 hours after I started. The next day I took my kids to McDonalds for a very once in awhile treat. They think it is a treat, I think it's just gross.

It wasn't even McD's busiest time of the day and they had 9 freaking staff. Let me rephrase that: McD's had 9 fucking staff on. All at once. That is something that you will never ever see on a 25 bed medical ward, or even the 35 bed one. I nearly threw my diet coke across the room. I bet they don't leave new starters alone to run the place either.

Just needed to whine a bit. I have to hold it all in and smile pretty at work.

* patient details changed. Confidentiality has not been breeched.