I am quite tired.

The ‘ol Critical Care Unit lately has been stuffed to the gills, and then some. We have an overflow unit that we use for a few days to a week at a time, every few months or so. Our overflow unit has been open for about a month, I think.

Consequently, the entire staff has been pretty much working lots of overtime and extra shifts for a month. We keep thinking that this will have to end at some point, and then we can all get back to our regularly scheduled census :-) I worked 3pm-11pm Friday, then “double backed” Saturday from 7am-7pm. I’m also working today.

The overflow unit is a real pain, because it’s 3 floors up from the main CCU. And since there are usually only 2-3 RN’s up there at a time (as opposed to about 8 RN’s on the main unit), there is less “resource.” This means that only the most stable patients are supposed to go up to overflow. When we’re extra-full, there is a lot of movement as patients get better and then get “promoted” to the upstairs ICU.

I find this a huge waste of time and effort. It’s really irritating. We had one patient admitted to overflow ICU, became unstable and was transferred to main ICU, only to be sent back up to overflow ICU the next day when he stabilized.

So now, in addition to RN’s working overtime and extra shifts, we’re spending those shifts moving bed-fulls of patients between units.

As I said, I am quite tired.

My boss called and asked me to come in early today. As I was asleep at the time, the machine got it. It’s very unusual for our boss to be at work on a Sunday. It obviously must be so busy and short-staffed that she has had to come in for the sole purpose of making phone calls to get people to work.

It’s not just physical tiredness that I feel, it’s also mental. It’s taxing to constantly be on your toes. Even though we’re busy, there are still times during the shift when it’s quiet and calm. Although we take full advantage of these times to take breaks/lunch, or sit at the desk and chat with each other, we all remain on “high alert” to react within seconds if an emergency comes up.

Not to mention the really sad cases that we currently have on the unit. Maybe I’m weak, but it really takes a toll on my psyche to come to work and watch these patients deteriorate day in and day out. We also had a patient that recently died (the 29yo I blogged about the other day with the high heart rate) and that has stunned us all. She had been transferred to another hospital in the hopes that they would be able to figure out what was wrong with her. She was there only one day before dying. Thanks to HIPPA, not one of us nurses that took care of her for the weeks that she was with us are able to find out what happened to her; it’s a breach of patient confidentiality now that she’s no longer in our hospital. I’m surprised we were even told that she died.

So even though I feel guilty as hell for not going into work early today, I’m going to enjoy sitting here at home, where there are no sick dying patients.

I wish I could steal back the part of my mind that is still there at work, watching the monitors.