Saturday, February 18, 2006

Call me Mud

I've had a few incidents happen at work this week which has left me feeling a little on edge.
Last Saturday night I worked in the Recovery Room. On weekends, there is only 1 nurse working and basically the only OR's that run, are the Trauma rooms. I had just gotten to work, there was a patient just waking up from surgery, and the Anaesthetist wanted to bring a patient up from the ER to put in an epidural block. I refused to allow him to do this because a) I was the only nurse and wouldn't be able to help him because I already had a patient b) he is notorious for not being able to put the catheters in quickly...the last time it took him 4 hours c) once a patient leaves Emerg, there is no way that they are going to accept that patient back again, they are way to busy, d) there were 3 stabbing victims and a gun-shot wound being assessed in Emerg and e) the Recovery Room is not meant to be a Procedures Room.
After I had refused him, a few hours later he came back into the Recovery Room and jokingly said that he didn't know I could be such a bitch! Hello?! He may have said it jokingly, but underneath the jokes, he wasn't joking.
So, I mentioned it to my manager, and she asked me to write a letter, which I did. The focus of my letter was basically to clarify whether we were to proceed with Special Procedures on non-surgical patients on the Off-shift hours. I never mentioned that he had called me a bitch. Well, this letter has now been forwarded to 5 different physicians, and I have this awful, sinking feeling that I'm going to marked as a shit-disturber. Which, I'm not!
Second uncomfortable incident is with regards to a nurse I worked with in Critical Care who applied for a full-time position in the Recovery Room. She didn't get hired because her interview went badly. But, now she has gone to the Union and Human Resources and apparently my name has come up in her grievance in that she states I have been bad-mouthing her! WTF?!?!?!
True, I don't particularly think this person is a great nurse, but I have never said anything about her to my manager, and certainly had nothing to do with her interview or the fact that she wasn't hired. The only thing I can think of, is that one of the other nurses and I were talking about the two nurses who had applied for the job (one of whom had already been working in the Recovery Room in a part-time position) and I had said that I hoped so-and-so would get the job because the other so-and-so probably wouldn't fit in as well.
So, all I can surmise is that there is a spy amongst the group who went and told the nurse who didn't get the job what I what I said. And now my name is Mud.

Is it true that you have to watch Every Single Thing That Comes Out of Your Mouth These Days?!
I'm annoyed.