A few weeks ago I had a patient named Helen who died. I’m not talking about a dramatic code or trauma, with people running around shouting for IV access, but rather an elderly woman who was at the end of her natural life. Dying in the Emergency Department is not
Continue readingTag: Nurses
Those Emergency Blues: Awesome
A few days ago, we had VSA come into the department. According to EMS, the patient had collapsed while grocery shopping down the road; CPR was started almost immediately by another shopper; EMS arrived and gave the usual ACLS drugs — epinephrine and atropine, as well as defribrillating him, but
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Got Mine. Got Yours?
The flu shot, that is. I got mine yesterday. And no, I did not get any flu-like symptoms. So get it over it, and go get the shot. Now. Especially if you’re a health care professional. What I wrote during the glory days of H1N1 two years ago still applies:
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Under Construction
Meaning me, of course. I worked a (rare) Night 12 a few days ago. It was the usual dog’s breakfast of high acuity, walking wounded without end lining up at Triage, and the particular Emergency Department hell of having no beds for, you know, emergency patients, the department being a
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Asking for Drugs
In the Emergency Department, part of a nurse’s job in discharging patients is to figure out if they are good to go home, because in part it’s good nursing practice, but mostly you don’t want to have them bouncing back in a few hours because they didn’t understand something, or have a question. So you […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: All Nurses Are Not Equal
My best friend Reid made an interesting point the other day. “I have,” she said, “an alphabet soup of certifications. I have ACLS. I have BCLS. I have TNCC. I have ENPC. I have pieces of paper that tell me I can run traumas and defibrillate people. I have critical care courses up the wazoo. […]
Continue readingDeath to PowerPoint and Other Notions
Back again.Yeah, I’ve been away for a while, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with writing or blogging. However my unintentional sabbatical has had the benefit of leaving me refreshed and full of ideas and so maybe wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I mean, in the two years I have operated […]
Continue reading350 or bust: “Canada’s The Best Country In The World”
It’s Thanksgiving Monday here in Canada. Me and mine have much to be thankful for today, having narrowly avoided a serious health crisis among one of our own. So this Thanksgiving I am grateful for the blessing of good health, and I can even appr…
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Andrea Horwath has a Complaint about the Health Care System.
For my American friends and readers, we’re having a provincial election here in Ontario. Since health care is deemed a provincial responsibility (though funded extensively by the federal government), it’s naturally a hot topic of discussion. At the televised leader’s debate a couple of days ago, New Democrat leader Andrea Horwath managed to step in […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: On Allegations of Patient Abuse at St. Joseph’s
This story concerning alleged abuse of a senior at St. Joseph’s Health Care Centre (and yes, I know “alleged” is a weasel word) has been making the rounds in the Toronto media, including some blaring front pages in the Toronto Sun: Ron Meredith claims two burly security guards at a west-end hospital manhandled him, dragged […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Labour Day and the Toronto Sun: An Annotation
Public sector workers are lazy and overpaid parasites sucking at the taxpayer teat. Or something. Please remember to tell us this when we’re doing ACLS on your sorry ass. Happy Labour Day. Love, TorontoEmerg Filed under: Colour Me Cynical, Life in the Emergency Department, What Passes for Humour Around Here Tagged: Canada, emergency department, emergency nursing, […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: The Hockey Season Cometh
Overheard in Fast Track: Grandmother: (pointing to hat on child with a Canadiens emblem) Who are they? Who’s your favourite hockey team? 3-year-old child: Habs! Some other patient: Losers! I tell you, she had some nerve, that child. In Toronto, no less. Filed under: Life in the Emergency Department, What Passes for Humour Around Here […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Snapshots of Nursing History
Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada. Filed under: Our Proud History, Public Images of Nurses and Nursing Tagged: Hospital for Sick Children, Nurse uniform, Nurses, Nursing, Toronto
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: In Which TorontoEmerg Discourses on Some Aspects of Human Nature
It’s probably more than little trite to say the Emergency Department is a microcosm or laboratory of humanity, but like most clichés it has an element of truth. We see all types in the ED, the good, the ugly, and the purely despicable. (And then I could talk about the patients.) We’re human, after all. But in […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Observations and Assessments
Notions to small for a blog post, all in one place. You need to take your pain medication. Once upon a time, TorontoEmerg had some fairly significant surgery on a major joint. It was (theoretically) exceeding painful, but fortunately TorontoEmerg’s orthopod was very generous in supplying TorontoEmerg with Percocets and Tylenol 3s, and thusly TorontoEmerge experienced very little […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Shi(f)t Work
Wanderer over at Lost on the Floor makes a point: My manager remarked to me that night-shifters tend to, “have a bit of chip on our shoulders, almost like the world owes you something.” Damn right I do. I’m up when most sane and rational people are asleep. I sleep when the rest of the […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: So When Does This Become a Crisis?
I walked into the Emergency Department one hot morning a couple of weeks ago and found every last stretcher — twenty-five beds, including the two we try to reserve for trauma or codes — was filled with admitted patients; furthermore, five additional patients were waiting for consultants and likely admission. We were operating at 120% […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Hotocalypse
Hot enough for ya? For you non-metric types, that 38C is an even 100F. I think I speak for most of my fellow Canadians when I say, “WTF?” I suppose it’s redundant and unnecessary to add that staying out of the sun, finding a cool, air-conditioned place to hole up in (if possible) and drinking […]
Continue readingHugh wants a “do-over”?
Today’s Freep has a piece by Dan Lett in it about how Hugh McFadyen and his team are “holding their fire” in this “pre-writ” period. I say, “pre-writ” period, because McFadyen has been campaigning for the past two years. This notion that Team Hughie is somehow just sitting back and working on their election infrastructure […]
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Get Me the Frickin’ Goat!
If only there was a magic goat. Part of an advertising campaign from the Nova Scotia Ministry of Health Promotion and Protection aimed at reducing harm from high risk behaviours. According to the No Magic Goat website: 911 is your friend. The goat, not so much. (She bites, for one). She’s cute and furry, but […]
Continue reading