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…
Nursing
O Why O Why Did I Pick Up The Phone?
Phone rings. I look around. There is no ward clerk in sight. Damn. I answer. “Emergency, Charge Nurse.” “Can I ask you a question?” The voice on the other end…
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
Choking on Your Own Vomit
Aspirating while more-or-less obtunded because of alcohol poisoning is not pretty, and I’ve seen a few VSAs related to chocking on your own puke that had very poor outcomes. Hence…
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…
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…
A Matter of Hours
I was talking the other day to young, surprisingly old-school physician who bemoaned nurses “doing things” she thought properly done by duly authorized medical practitioners. (She also implied, by-the-by, that…
A Letter to a Younger Colleague
Dear Colleague You are fairly new to our Emergency Department, you have done your Emergency Nursing courses and you now have collected a slew of certification initials: ACLS, PALS, TNCC,…
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…
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…
Flattery Will Get You Everywhere
It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Team TorontoEmerg. First, I’ve been working like a rented mule, and secondly, a colleague whom I trusted and respected sandbagged me with…
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…
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.…
Triage
The world in four patients, plus interruptions. Who’s next? Come in. Do you have your Health Card? Take off your hoodie and sit down. What brings you in today? Where…
Happy Canada Day
And all that. No Cobourg frolic this year, unfortunately, just work, work, work The dearth of posts the past week is not for lack of trying — have several rattling…
The Most Useless Form on the Planet
Imagine this: you’ve had the shift from hell, no beds, every other patient is moments away from seeing Jesus/Allah/Buddha and to top it off, the department is down three nurses,…
I’ve Been Selected for a Not-So-Clever Marketing Scheme
This blog has been named as one of the ”20 Best Blog for Nurses” by that august institution, Jacksonville University School of Nursing. My jaded, cynical, shrivelled heart tells me…
New Contract Beats Up on Ontario Nurses
On 3 June 2011, an arbitration panel handed down the new contract for the majority of Ontario hospital nurses. The panel was set up when negotiations between the Ontario Hospital…
Bad Nurse! Bad!
I guess my venting, raging post the other day offended and/or ticked some people off, or at least the use of the strong language did. No sooner had I posted…
In Which I Swear, Repeatedly, or, TorontoEmerg Gets Bullied
I write this blog for a number of reasons: my own amusement, to educate, to share various random thoughts, to tell stories, to stimulate discussion on topics important to nursing,…