Venting session

Tonight was a slow night in the ER considering it's a Sunday night.  Usually we are busting at the seams with wait times up to 1.5 hours to get a room and 2 hours to be seen.  There were several occasions where There was nobody in the waiting room.  All night we had empty rooms, which is good.  I was able to enjoy watching a few football games which made for nice.

My shift is from 11am to 11pm.  The person in charge closes 4 rooms by 11pm because lack of nursing staff to keep them open.  Depending on the doctor and patient flow they start closing these rooms between 9 and 9:30.

My assignment tonight was the section that gets closed off early.  I discharged my last patient at 9:30.  We have 15 open beds in the ER, 11 if you claim my four rooms closed.  With my shift ending, I assumed I would be sent home because you can't justify the staffing (we had 2 float nurses after 7pm).  The coworkers next to me had a total of 3 patients to 2 nurses.

I wait around for 15 minutes for the "you can go home" from the charge nurse.  I finally decide to walk around to see if anybody needed help (nobody did, we had 2 other nurses helping out).

After another few minutes I'm told I will be getting an ambulance.  I know I look dumbfounded.  As I said above, my section should have been closed by this point, even with a fast doctor.  Because I am who I am instead of asking why not send that ambulance to one of the other nurses and send me home, I say OK and go wait for them.

By the time the ambulance arrives I had zero patients for more than half an hour.  Every nurse in the ER had only 2 patients to care for.  I do my job, take care of the patient, and less than 10 minutes later we are just waiting on CT results.  I'm done documenting on this patient by 1015, 45 minutes until the end of my shift.

Still waiting to get sent home.  Nothing.  I go kill time elsewhere.  By 1030pm I'm completely pissed off.  There are no ambulances out, no patients in the lobby, and every nurse has 2 patients to care for (except me, remember, I have one patient and 3 closed rooms at this time).

I decide to make myself scarce so the charge nurse doesn't find me.  Why bother going home?  My shift is over in less than 30 minutes and I'm not allowed to refuse being sent home early (that I know of).

By the time 11pm rolls around I'm beyond frustrated.  I could have gone home early and spent some time with my wife before she fell asleep, even if it was just watching TV.  That's better than not seeing her until she gets home from work tomorrow (we work opposite schedules, I sometimes go for several days without seeing her).

I give report on my patient to the nurse relieving me and I make my way to the break room.  I am very passive aggressive.  I would rather avoid confrontation and not make a scene.  The only thing I can do to be spiteful is get paid to sit.

We work 12 hour shifts.  If you take a 30 minute lunch break you need to stay until 30 minutes after your shift is over in order to get a paid lunch break.  For me I have to clock out at 11:30 to get that paid lunch.  Most of the time I would rather clock out and head home.  I'm too awake and pissed off to want to go home.

My passive aggressive self sat for 30 minutes in our break room so I could get a paid lunch break.  All in the name of spite.  No it didn't make me feel any better but at least I got paid to play on my phone for 30 minutes.

Speaking of taking a break, the overnight crew works from 7p-7a.  Typical in our line of work.  They regularly have potluck dinners because that's what they do.  They have recently started waiting to bring out their potluck food until after 11pm, when all the day shift people are gone.  No big deal, I'm leaving anyway.

During my spiteful sitting tonight one of the night shifters comes into the break room and notices all the food in the crockpot is gone.  This is just barely after 11pm.  She commented "See, this is why we don't bring the food out until after day shift is gone, they eat all the food."

Talk about rubbing me the wrong way after already being in a pissy mood.  I was the only "day" shift staff in the ER at this point.  The others left at 7pm and the one who came in at 11am with me went home sick.  The night shift had eaten all the food.  I hadn't been in the break room for more than 5 minutes when this was said and most of the food was already gone before I even came in.

All I wanted to say was "Fuck you, your overnight people ate all the food."  But what good would that do?  I decided to keep my mouth shut and stare at the phone.  Only 15 minutes until I could leave with my passive aggressive boycott for not getting sent home early.

I survived the night without saying too much.  It took a lot out of me.