Last week while grocery shopping I ran into one of my instructors from nursing school days. Ann Treglia was one of those instructors you never forget. What memories it always brings back whenever I see her. She never fails to remind me of my first day of clinical, during first quarter nursing school, about a hundred years ago. She was a strict, comical, knowledgeable and very compassionate nurse and instructor.
What a job she had, getting all the newbies who didn't know anything about giving nursing care.. She has told me many times how the memory I made for her would stay with her for the rest of her life. Evidently it has, since she always reminds me of it.
So, on this first day of clinical, we all show up in our new crisp white uniforms and little white caps. At that point in our training, we were skill trained to do 2 things. Bed to chair transfers and bed baths. We knew nothing! We were as fresh as it gets. We had our patients assigned and for the next 2.5 hrs. we were to visit with them, give them their bath, transfer them to a chair (even if they were capable of transferring themselves) and change their bedding. We also worked in teams of two. Thank goodness for that!
Mr. K. was several hrs. "TUR" post op. My partner Tonya and I enter his room both feeling very confident, and I'm sure we were also filled with our share of self importance. We spend a few minutes introducing ourselves and explain that we are going to bathe him and get him up to sit in a chair for awhile.
He is still a little groggy but very cooperative. He was too cooperative.
We fumbled through the bath and shave and now it was time to get him up. We sit him on the side of the bed, where I want him to stay for a moment, while we evaluate him for dizziness. Mr. K. was ambitious and had his own ideas about getting up. He wants to prove he can get himself up and before we even realized what he was doing, he stood and stepped right onto his IV line, pulling it loose from the 3 way. Blood started shooting out of that thing everywhere. Did we know to just pick up the line and reattach it? No! Did we even have common sense enough to plug the hole with a finger to stop the blood? No! Panic time!! I immediately sat him back on the side of the bed while calling for my partner to go find Ann, NOW!
What seemed like hours (was actually seconds) later, here comes Tonya, Ann and the charge nurse. Ann says she will never forget running into that room and there sat my patient on the side of that bed, trying to comfort me, while I was on my knees, in front of him, my hands cupped trying to "catch" the blood that was pouring out...
To make matters worse, when they evaluated how much blood they thought he had lost, it was enough that a phone call needed to be made to his attending.
Thank God, it turned out that he did not require a transfusion. Of course it was Mr. K. who remained the calmest person in that room. I remember him being so kind and worried that I was going to be in trouble, while I was so worried that he was going to bleed to death.
So there I sat in our very first post shift meeting, with all my peers, who obviously had a better day than I did, (their uniforms were still white) looking like I had just come from a slaughter. A lesson learned!
