Wednesday, June 23, 2010

can I go back on orientation please?

It's not that I feel I need more orientation. I don't need special help or more time adjusting. What I need is: INTERESTING PATIENTS. Since I've been off orientation, I have been bored stiff. Things that once excited me, like vented patients, art lines, blood gases... they do not excite me on the patients I have been given, easy patients, failure to weans or patients ready to be extubated. These patients are not sedated, they write on paper or mouth words to me (I am terrible at reading lips). Or they bang on their side rails with whatever they can find. Or press the call light 20 million times. Medically they aren't on the verge of coding or needing pressors or anything at all interesting. I've run out of things to google, people to call, appointments to make, things to eat, because I'm so damn bored. On the floor I had patients like this, but I had three of them. Now I have one of them, maybe two, and don't know what to do with myself.

Everyone keeps saying "oh be careful what you wish for" but I'm seriously trying to temp fate. Give me a learning opportunity! A juicy hit! A patient on pressors, paralytics, sedation! Something, anything. I'm in one of the most critical ICUs in the whole country, how can I possibly be this bored???

1 comment:

E.J. said...

If you have a good critical care reference book, sit down and start reading it. In my experience, that's usually a good way to tempt fate.