Guinea pig

After all of that worrying, I have gotten the COVID vaccine.

I did research for weeks, printed out article after article, read whatever I could on the CDC website, and talked to my co-workers that have gotten the shot.

I am being the guinea pig for my family. My family (as was I) has been distrustful of the vaccine. I decided I would be the first and let them know how it has been. I want to do my part in trying to get this pandemic under control. Once I get the second vaccine done I will discuss with my family about getting theirs as well.

I am trusting the science. I am trying to be a good role model for my family, and hopefully others in the black community, to follow. I’m trying to do the right thing.

The vaccine is here, why I haven’t gotten it yet…

Two vaccines have arrived to help with this COVID outbreak, one from Pfizer and one from Moderna. I have signed up for neither.

I know as a nurse I should be one of the first to get out there and get vaccinated. However, I still have questions that I needed answers for and only recently have I starting finding the answers. I wanted to know more about side effects, how many participated in the studies, how is the vaccine supposed to work?

There is also one other thing that has been holding me back; I am black and I have an inherent distrust of the medical system, the very system I am a part of as a nurse. Learning about things such as the “Tuskegee experiment”, seeing how many times the healthcare system has failed black women, seeing in person how implicit bias plays a role in how medical professionals treat people of color, realizing that there was only a small amount of people of color (9.8%) were actually in the Pfizer study, all make me wary.

I want to trust the science behind the vaccine. I want to trust the medical system. I want to believe in the potential of finally getting this pandemic under control. I also want to feel safe.

The frustration with University of Facebook

I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it.

The posts FULL of misinformation about COVID: who is most affected, how it’s spread, magical yet TOTALLY UNSUBSTANTIATED treatments, it’s enough to make a nurse want to flip a table!

I let go of Facebook years ago because of the stuff I would see on my time line. People seem to think that if someone says that someone major said it, it must be true! They offer no evidence, no background information, no research data, just whatever they think is true. And goodness, do NOT try to provide evidenced based information about why what they said isn’t true, then you’re a “sheep” or you’re gullible.

Think about that: you’re gullible for looking up evidence, but they aren’t gullible for placing their faith in a Facebook post.

That’s where we are now, folks.

To all my nurses and other medical professionals, if your education is falling on deaf ears, let it go. You have done what you can do. Don’t waste your time arguing with people on so I media about how unsafe their posts are. It’s not worth it. Your sanity, however, is very worth it. Continue to be safe for yourself and continue to institute measures to keep your family safe. That’s your priority.

Have any of you seen something online that made you want to scream?

Stop! Rally time!

Monday we had a gun rights rally on the Capitol. It brought back memories…

Bad ones.

I was charge nurse the night of the Charlottesville riot. Some of the people that were hit by the maniac that drove through the crowd were on our unit. Knowing that hatred could drive someone to kill, knowing that an innocent woman died because of hatred, it killed me inside. As a black woman, I know all too well what hatred can do.

I just didn’t want to see it all happen again.

Luckily, the state was prepared this time and declared a “state of emergency” before the rally. This led to increased security and a ban on weapons on Capitol grounds. So far, the rally has not resulted in any injuries. Weapons were out and people were walking around in full tactical gear. That nut job Alex Jones even made an appearance.

No one has been hurt.

That’s what I care about most of all. No one was hurt. Everyone gets to go home and back to whatever “normal” life they have.

As a nurse, rallies, protests, hell even large gatherings have a different meaning to me. I see potential mass casualty. I see potential chaos. I see potential patients.

That day in Charlottesville fundamentally changed me.

Alpha-gal syndrome

I learn about new disorders all the time here in MRI. Normally I’ve at least heard the name of the disease or disorder before, or I know a teeny bit about it.

I have never heard of alpha-gal. At least, I’ve never heard the name.

Turns out, I have heard of the disorder before. I had a patient once tell me he was allergic to pork because of a tick bite.

Alpha-gal is a “sugar molecule found in most mammals (except in people, apes, and monkeys)” (CDC.gov, 2019). Turns out there is a tick (lone star tick) that can transmit the molecule in blood from the animal to humans. We humans don’t normally make the molecule but apparently we can make an immune response to it. If we develop an allergy then we can no longer eat meat from cow, pork, rabbit, deer, lamb, essentially the animals work hooves! The odd thing about it, and what makes it kind of hard to diagnose, is the fact that the reaction tends to take place 3-6 hours after the ingestion of meat. It’s hard for a lot of people to make the association between meat and their allergic reactions.

I found a good podcast about the disorder. Lots of information about how it works and the ongoing research around it.

One of the things I realized while looking further into the disease is how important it is to ask your patient about allergies. Alpha-gal is uncommon, however, patients with it can’t have certain medications. Heparin is typically derived from pork. Some insulin is derived from pigs and cows as well. There are quite a few medications that have porcine or bovine derivatives. A nurse would have to make sure to take this into account for their patient with this particular allergy.

Then again, when is the nurse not taking safety into account, right?

Safety first

I feel like safety may be starting to take a back seat to profit and productivity. Nursing is increasingly being pressured to move patients from ICU to the floor quicker. Discharge the patient quicker so that another patient can be admitted. Get patients to this scan or that scan faster. It’s not safe.

As a former ICU nurse, I have witnessed patients being moved to the step-down or the floor before they are really ready. Two days later they were back in the ICU do to a decline in the patient’s status. Typically they were in worse condition than they were when we moved them out. As a former floor nurse, I have seen discharges be rushed because they needed the bed for the next admission. Patient education was minimal at best. As a radiology nurse, I am seeing patients come down to MRI that are in no condition to be inside a scanner for an hour. There is a constant rush to get the outpatients on and off the table.

I understand hospitals need to make a profit to continue providing care. I get that we need to treat as many patients as possible. However, when you rush your medical personnel you open the door for mistakes and safety events. I became a nurse to provide the best care I can provide. I don’t see my patients as just a medical record number and a hospital bill. I see people that are here for our help. I see people that are bracing themselves for a potentially devastating diagnosis. I see people that need my care. I don’t like feeling like I have to rush this person through the process.

What happened to the so-called “culture of safety”? When did safety take a backseat to speed? I refuse to place anything before the safety of my patient. So, continue to look at your numbers, your productivity charts, your profit margins. I will continue to take care of my patients as I was taught and give each patient the time they need.

Pacemakers?

My hospital is one of the few in our area that will perform an MRI on patients with pacemakers.

It makes me nervous.

I KNOW it’s supposed to be considered “safe” now. The newer pacers and defibrillators are being made to be compatible with MRI scanners.

It still makes me nervous.

I just don’t feel I should be throwing a person, with a magnet sensitive device, into a giant magnet. I feel like it’s a risk everytime I do it. Is an MRI of the wrist really necessary on this 79 year old man with a pacemaker/defibrillator combo? Like, is this life or death? Are you going to do surgery?

No?

Then why are we taking this risk?

I just don’t like it.

Do any of your facilities perform MRI’s on patients with pacemakers or defibrillators?

July…

It’s July. For some of you that’s no big deal. However, if you work in a teaching hospital July means something deeper… Darker…

The “brand new” residents begin their rotations…

Chaos ensues.

If you have had the pleasure of avoiding the July rush, you’re lucky. For the rest of us, there’s a sense of impending doom.

So many orders. Most make no sense.

-pediatric doses ordered for adults.

-level one head CT for “AMS” on your 98 year old patient with known dementia.

-12.5 mcg of fentanyl q3hrs for your chronic pain patient.

-one unit of blood for an hgb of 5.

-MRI of the ankle to look for osteomyolitis of the toe.

Many, many more orders from an alternate reality…

In this moment, it is your time to shine! You are the only barrier between your patient and a doctor that is still getting their bearings. You’re going to have to speak up, a lot. You’re going to have to advocate. You may even have to knock a new doc off their self-appointed pedestal (when they tell you you’re “just a nurse” please refrain from punching them in the throat).

You can do this. Take a deep breath and remember: you’ve made it through many July’s and you’ll make it through many more…

Set up… To fail

So, the higher ups have decided to implement new changes in our department to make us more “efficient”.

😒🙄

Are the changes going to work?

No.

I say no, not because I am against change. I embrace change and fully believe medicine is an ever changing field.

I say no because the changes are rigid.

Our department is very fluid. We may not have a single patient one minute, and the next minute 6 outpatients are here and there is an vented ICU patient on the way down and a patient waiting to go back to their room. Our patient flow changes throughout the day and unfortunately the decision makers don’t recognize that. They see numbers. They see productivity. Pie charts and bar graphs.

Patient care just doesn’t work like that.

However, we are going to implement the changes. We will go along with what management wants. We will grumble and groan as we see how poorly the changes work. We aren’t afraid to speak up. The speaking has been done. At this point, we are going along so we can watch the changes fail and create more problems. We are doing this so that they can see how inefficient their decisions are.

Sometimes the only way to get through to someone is to stop talking.

Drug dealers

Sometimes I feel like the health care industry are some of the biggest drug dealers around.

Case in point, the largest drug bust involving medical providers happened just this month. I first heard about it on the news while at work. Of course I had to look into it because I didn’t want to believe professionals in the very field I work in would stoop this low.

I was wrong.

This NPR article gave some numbers that were astonishing. There were almost 60 individuals caught in this bust. The Appalachia region of the US has been hard hit by the opioid epidemic. It was discovered that over 32 MILLION opioid pills had been prescribed in this region. If you don’t know, that’s more pills than there are people in most of the states in the Appalachian area! Doctors, NP’s, pharmacists, even a damn dentist was part of the drug problem. The Washington Post article tells a little bit more about how absolutely unbelievable these “professionals” were. Some traded opiates for sex. One doctor operated a pharmacy in his waiting room. The dentist apparently unnecessarily pulled teeth to justify writing prescriptions! However, the article goes even further with all kinds of things these people were doing in exchange for writing prescriptions. It’s shameful. So many people are dying of overdoses. So many are in our emergency rooms getting narcan to try and save their lives. So many people are on our units going through horrible withdrawal symptoms. Why would anyone in the medical field want to contribute to opioid epidemic?

It seems like the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) is starting to crack down on medical field when it comes to opioids. The New York branch of the DEA just charged a pharmaceutical distributor with unlawful distribution. This case is one of the first of its kind in the country. If this works out as planned, I feel like we may start to see more companies held responsible as well as individuals.

It needs to happen. There needs to be some sort of accountability for the medical field. Some of us are a part of the problem, they need to be removed. We are here to save lives, not destroy them!