You Can't Silence Us

This past week, posting has been light. That’s because I have been orienting at the new job. I’ve been attending classes this past two weeks. There was the normal HR bs that you have to endure, some of it required by regulations, some of it the “rah-rah, this is the best company ever” garbage, IT policies, network security, social media policies, etc. That was two full work days.

Then there was compliance training for the new nurses at four different hospitals training on things like stroke protocols, HIPAA compliance, that sort of thing. It was all of the disciplines- medical/surgical, ICU, PACU, PCU, outpatient surgery, and more. Another three workdays. It was during this training that the nurses bound for the ED and the ICU argued with the nurses headed for other units, and with the nurse who was teaching the class. It was during the segment on testing blood sugar. The instructor said the unit can’t test blood sugar on a patient in cardiac arrest, but even if you could, it wouldn’t matter because you can’t give IV medications to someone without a pulse because no blood is moving. I was the first one to speak up. I pointed out that this is false, because we give all sorts of IV medication during a code- to include Calcium, Epinephrine, and even dextrose. The instructor told me I was wrong. The rest of the ED and ICU nurses chimed in their support, and the argument escalated from there. I pointed out that I am an ACLS instructor, board certified nurse- and I told her she was wrong. The instructor countered with “I am an instructor, too.” I bit off my first instinct to say “Not a very good one, then,” so instead I replied by reading directly from the American Heart Association’s page, proving her wrong. She still wouldn’t bend. That was when I noticed the woman who was standing in the corner, having walked in during our disagreement: My new boss, who was there to take me to lunch.

My new boss was cool with it and told me not to worry about the instructor and pointed out that there is a reason why she has never been in a critical care unit. The rest of the day went by quietly. The next day was spent in online training on ER specific policies.

We moved on to the second week- this one was in our actual workplace under instruction precepting and learning hospital protocols and procedures. What this meant in my case was my preceptor sat at the nurse’s station while I took care of our patients. Halfway through the day, I overheard the director telling my preceptor: “It’s his first day, you can’t just sit here without giving him any help our guidance.” To which the preceptor replied “He’s doing great.”

I worked four days in week two. My only weekday off (Thursday) was spent finishing up my network upgrades. I installed a supervised gateway and switch. Things went badly, and I wound up crashing the entire network. I spent over 8 hours getting everything back. A frustrating way to spend a day off. I was going to post about the left’s reaction to the submarine SINKEX, but Miguel beat me to it, so that post got tossed.

Monday starts my third and final week of training. There is a lot of information: Protocols, procedures, medication standing orders, those sorts of things. In the ER, there is too much going on, with much of it being time sensitive, so ED nurses enter their own orders for things. It’s one of the things I like about being an ED nurse- we have a lot of autonomy. It’s also why I carry a million bucks in malpractice insurance.

Since this is a PRN job, I already told them that, once my training is done, I am taking three weeks off. Three weeks of full time hours equals three weeks off. I am not about to work full time hours in what is supposed to be a part time position.

Blogging to resume on Sunday.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been transitioning from full time employment at one hospital to part time employment at another. There were physicals, credentialing, fingerprints, and background checks. What do you know, my new employer tells me that I had a positive quantiferon test. What this means is I have been exposed to Tuberculosis at some point since I was onboarded at my last job in 2023, and I now my body is manufacturing antibodies.

That’s pretty common in workers in emergency medicine, thanks largely to our homeless shitbag population. Contrary to what you have been told, being homeless isn’t something that happens to people through bad luck. No, the people who are homeless have a substance abuse problem, a mental health problem, or both. The person who just falls on hard luck is rare, and those who are homeless from bad luck rarely stay there for long. When I was homeless, it was caused by my ex-wife taking everything in the divorce, and I was homeless for less than a month. I think it was two weeks or so.

Anyhow, my old employer says that I could have been exposed to TB anywhere and I can’t prove otherwise, so they aren’t doing crap about it. This means that I will have to get a chest x-ray every year for the rest of my life, to make sure I don’t actually have TB. I’m gonna be like Doc Holiday.

After all of that was done, I had to begin my orientation and onboarding. It turns out that I know some of the instructors and a couple of the managers. The rest of the onboarding class was wondering how I seemed to know so many people.

Now I have to precept for a couple of weeks so they can finish training me on the new hospital’s policies and procedures. Then I drop down to working 4-6 days per month. Easing into retirement, as it were. I’m waiting to see if my old employer tries to screw me out of the PTO that I had banked (110 hours worth, so about 3 weeks’ pay).