What to do when you want to smother them with a pillow? Take a walk to the other side of the unit; there's bound to be a nurse with a worse group than yours. The other night I had five patients. Five instead of the usual six. I thought for sure it would be a cake walk. However, sadly, I was wrong. Two had urine which tested positive for benzos, opiods, marijuana, and alcohol. They were PISSED that they could not get pain meds around the clock. A third patient was schizophrenic. She talked to herself. Kept saying, "There she is. Get her. Get rid of her" every time I entered the room. This made me repeatedly wonder if she harbored a weapon under her sheets. The fourth was a dementia patient who ignored the siren of a bed alarm and leapt out of bed to the bedside commode Q20 minutes. All. Night. Long. And she was darned feisty about it! The fifth, God bless her, was a lovely elderly woman who was so pleasant despite the gaping diabetic wound that she called her right foot.
That night I hung more antibiotics that I had in the three weeks previous. And I said, "No, you cannot have any narcotics" more times than in the previous year.
However, despite the long twelve hours, at least I didn't have the patient in 335 who screamed over and over and over "Help me!"
