As you can see, it is another sleep-deprived night.
Had to post the Art of Mental Warfare video directly to the blog. Being that friends have checked it out and taken it and run to their own sites with it (yippee!!), I thought I should go ahead and add the video in addition to the link. I may re-post it weekly until the election next year. heeheeheeheehee This is my brain on no sleep.
I will have a few days away from work next week. I am not scheduled back in until Thursday evening then for an overnight shift on Friday. Those boys will be at the sitters on Monday and Friday. Grandma is taking a bit of a break next week. I think I have earned on after being at work for 11 days straight. Good thing I am contingent!!
The paperwork snafu from the monthly change-over was more than I expected. Nothing had been put into the patient charts. Last month's paperwork is just scattered over the conference table in the office in no particular order. I will work on fixing that tomorrow. I am hoping that Brian is too busy studying for his final exams and doesn't decide to pop in tomorrow (this) morning before I get it all put into some type of orderly configuration.
The patient drama was my psych patient full-on with her drug seeking behavior. She picked a fight with one of her house mates as I was leaving tonight. Glad I missed that one. And, my surly guy refused to take his medication. Nothing new with that one. My extraneous drama was the fire alarm being set off. Luckily, it was dinner time and everyone was up so the patients were evacuated quickly. In doing the check to make sure everyone was out, I found a staff still in one apartment trying to figure out how to turn off the oven. I got the oven off and the staff out. The fire doors in that apartment had malfunctioned and did not close. LOVELY! That meant extra notifications in addition to the two reports that I had to fill out. My staff drama was being snagged by my coverage assistant (more about next paragraph) as soon as I had walked in the door this afternoon and being asked if I would do a favor... We have a staff person who is not wanting to get with the program as far as taking care of our patients with colostomies. She bailed on the training I did with staff two weeks ago. My coverage assistant asked me to give her a personal training session today. And, I did. I picked the easy one to train her with. Had she decided to be noncompliant with this training session today, we would have done the hard one tomorrow.
My coverage assistants. They are the people who secretly run everything. They are responsible for having enough staff in each apartment, coordinating breaks and the staffing needed to cover breaks, staffing to do outings and events. They have to find people to cover call-offs. They make the schedules. Their phone rings off the hook with all sorts of calls from the staff. (Not even going to go down that particular avenue. I have heard some of these calls, and it makes you shake your head.) They do various audits to make sure everything from housekeeping to dinner preparation and service is done correctly. They do written testing for all new hires at 30, 60, and 80 days. They distribute time sheets and attendance records. And, there is only one of them per shift in most cases. There are a few days when there is a one or two hour over-lap of their shifts. But, there is more than enough staff drama and filing alone for three people.
My weekend day shift coverage assistant is new to the position. She does a great job. As I commented to Joni tonight, she's learning very quickly if you want something done, find me.... LOL
Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Doesn't matter if it's locating yellow highlighter markers or fixing a wheelchair, they come looking for me. Their supervisor does it too, so I'm wondering where they learned it from! LOL You know, it really sucks to be the person who won't say "That's not my job." Last week, I spent time looking for a replacement for an adaptive spoon that had somehow disappeared between lunch and dinner. I schlep supplies. I strip beds and wash laundry. I listen to staff complaints and concerns, and I tell them what I need them to be watching for in response to their concerns. Then, I relay this information to the coverage assistant as they are the person whose unofficial job description includes doing whatever needs done for all the residents.
Don't misunderstand and think that I am the only nurse who is this involved. We have a couple of other nurses who will shower people, change beds, feed people, take people to and from activities and from the bus when they get home from work. The problem lies in the fact that we are a very small minority. The up-side is that the three of us are all working together tomorrow! Yea!! It's going to be a good Sunday!
My next big paperwork project is going to be to reassign everyone's labs to be drawn on designated days of the week. Once it is done, it will be great. It is no simple matter though to reassign testing for 70 people. That should take the better part of two weeks. But, once it's done, it will work great. As it stands now, we will have no draws scheduled on one day, ten scheduled for the following day, and two the day after that. Not good. I did succeed in getting everyone's labs coordinated so we're not sticking people multiple times within a couple of weeks. This year, I'm taking it to the next step. Oy! Good thing I'm contingent! ~insert appropriate ROFLMAO emoticon here~
It's creeping up on 5am. I have to try and get a nap in at this point. Wish me luck.
Oh, and my guy called off work for tomorrow. Studying for finals. He had some of his tests and papers with him today for review. I will be so thankful when this next week is done. Too soon it will be on to the next quarter. Four more to go. He will make it through fine. I am not so sure about me. LOL It does make me appreciate what it must have been like for my family and friends when I was in nursing school. Frankly, I don't like it one bit, but I support him and bitch about it here.
Off to bed.
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