crispy critters

I know I'm sounding horribly tiresome, but I'm so burnt out on work, and not sleeping at night! This is the fourth night in a row I haven't gotten sleep at all, and the last two days, I've had off of work. I go back to work in about twelve hours, and I just don't know how I'm gonna make it.

I wish I had a better job, and I even went so far as applying for ICU positions at That One Good Hospital From Last Summer, where they had real evidence based medicine and practice, rather than, "Huh, it seems the attending flushed his pager down the toilet, so I can't give you anything for any of your emergent cardiac issues, anxiety attacks, profuse bleeding through a new dialysis port, dementia, or blinding pain!"

As I said to several of my nurse friends: it's hard to be a nurse who's better at being a nurse than the doctor is at being a doctor. Doctors should, in some respects, be better practitioners--they should be the people nurses trust to get appropriate and timely interventions ordered. There is rarely a time I call a doctor any more that I don't anticipate an order set, and unfortuately, at this particular institution, there is rarely a time I get exactly what it is I think the patient needs.

This isn't me being "too big for my professional britches." Believe me, I ask questions all the time of my colleagues. This is a case of doctors practicing indifferent, harmful medicine, and it scares the shit out of me, because that could well be me lying in the bed, close to death, without appropriate pain medicine, or whatever.

Sometimes I wish I did something less morally questionable with my life, and I know I need to get a job a hospital that is more in line with my own professional ideals and ethical standards.

I personally would think it less morally bankrupt, and a lot more dignified, if I worked at the local strip club as a cocktail waitress. I'd probably make more money, for significantly less stress and moral trauma. And I already get goosed on the ass by demented old men--what's the difference?

As one of my nurse friends said, "Who cares if we're selling our asses out on the street, we're all getting fucked [in the hospital] any way!"

(And we don't mean fucked in a pleasant, recreational way, either.)