The worst nurse night

On my way to work today, I prayed "God, when the people I work with want to know what you are like, I pray they'd look at me, and when they look at me I pray I'd be a reflection of you." If only I'd known what the afternoon held, I would have prayed, "God, if people want to know what you are like, don't let them look at me!"
So as not to bore you with extended narrative I'll just give a brief summary of the worst nurse night ever.
1. It started with a pink ward. I should have known as soon as I saw the coral/pink wall color that it was going to be a bad night. Not only that, but there were four or five hallways coming out of the nursing station like the rays of a star. I spent the evening perpetually lost and having to ask for directions.
2. I walked into the report room and all the nurses looked at me and one of them asked, "Are you orienting here?" I said "No, I'm working the evening shift." They looked at me incredulously. "But we've never seen you before. Have you ever worked here before?" I tried to exude confidence. "No, but I've worked in other wards here. I'll be fine." They didn't seem to exude any confidence in me at all.
3. I was busy giving out pills before dinner when I made a drug error. It was a routine dose that was due at that time, but the staff on before me had given it before its scheduled time and left a little note saying not to give it in the evening. I didn't see the note until I went to sign the chart and felt the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't a serious mistake at all, but protocol usually demands filling out an incident report. I went and spoke with the team leader and she rolled her eyes and sighed and made a comment to another nurse about the mistake I'd made and told me to leave a note for the nurse in charge in case they wanted to do follow-up. I did so, and then went back to my duties, feeling humbled and determined to focus more.
4. While giving pills to one patient, she was having trouble swallowing. I thought she'd swallowed the last mouthful so I popped another one in. She started gagging and choking and coughing, and kept at it for a good 15 minutes. I sat on the edge of her bed holding her up and contemplating the prospect of doing mouth-to-mouth on someone with applesauce and vomit coming out of their mouth, and I almost started to gag myself.
5. One of my patients required a condom catheter to be put on at night. (Kind of like a condom attached to a catheter bag.)A care aide was in the room with me and I got everything out and went to put the condom on but discovered the poor man was much more well-endowed than the tubing allowed for. The care aide took it from me "Here, I'll show you how to do it!" and tried to stuff things into place, making highly inappropriate comments about the family jewels and all that. I tried to shut her up to no avail, trying to assist while the poor man was in agony. I suggested a larger size and the care aide said no, this one was fine, but finally I had enough and said I didn't care, I was going to get a bigger size. I ran down the hall and found one and with considerable difficulty we finally got the larger one on. Unfortunately it wouldn't unroll properly and the tape got stuck on his hair and it just went from bad to worse to much worse. At the end of the ordeal I offered him a warm blanket and he just glared at me. Poor man. I stopped in later and asked how he was feeling, and let me tell you, if looks could have killed I would have been dead on the floor.
6. You thought that was bad? Later I went by his room again and discovered two staff mopping up the floor. It appeared that I'd forgotten to close the open port on the bottom of the catheter bag and his urine had just drained right out and all over the floor in a massive puddle.
7. When I was giving nighttime pills a patient asked me for a laxative. I checked his chart and there was no order written for it, so I hummed and hawed and asked another staff if he usually got it at night. "Oh, he knows what he needs!" She exclaimed. "If he asks for it, you can give it." I felt a little like I was taking a risk but I wrote a nurse-initiated-order and gave him the medication. Just to cover all my bases, I wrote in the nursing notes that I'd given him the laxative and filled out report stating what time he'd received it, etc. etc. A couple of hours later I happened to double check his chart and discovered that there was after all a regular order for the laxative, I had just missed it. He did in fact get them every night and all that was required of me was my initials. I can picture the next shift coming on and reading report. "So, what emergencies happened last shift? Let's see what they wrote. Mr. Smith got a laxative? Goodness, who would write that? It must have been that agency nurse. Those agency nurses. Always charting on the most trivial things."
8. I was getting one patient up out of her wheelchair using a special electric lift. I got everything arranged properly and got her lifted up and wheeled into the bathroom, and it was hot work and I was sweating bullets. She said to me suddenly, 'I don't mean to be rude, dear, but have you ever actually used one of these lifts before?" I wanted to shout, of course I have! Hundreds of times! But instead I just smiled. "yes I have." Then I saw where I'd hooked the straps together incorrectly. Oh dear.
9. Another patient was very distressed and had been shouting and calling out in Cantonese for some time before I finally gave him a mild tranquilizer. His roommate was frustrated as all get out and kept shouting "Speak English!" I went over to him to calm him down and said, "look, love, he can't help it. Tell you what, if it bothers you that he's shouting in another language, why don't you try shouting in another language too?" He started to laugh. "Well, I can speak Russian and Polish." "Russian will do." I said, and tried a few of my Russian words on him. He started speaking in Russian and both of them calmed down. A little later when some other nurses came in the room I could hear him shouting in Russian. I retreated down the hallway just a little guiltily wondering if there were any ethical issues with teaching your patients to shout in foreign languages at each other.
9. Halfway home tonight I realize I'd forgotten to get my timesheet signed. You know what? If I don't get paid for working today I don't even care. Driving home I couldn't stop laughing, everytime I thought of the urine all over the floor or the horrible pink walls or the look on the catheterized man's face when I asked him how he was feeling. I wonder if I'll ever have to work on that ward again, and I wonder if I do, if the nursing staff and patients will be happy to see me again.
Oh, the joys of being humbled!