If you can keep your head while all about you are ...

then damn it girl friend you are the charge nurse.

It was quite the day yesterday at work and it always amazes me how a simple concept of too many patients, not enough beds confuses people. I tried using simple statements such as .... 'we don't have any beds' when the OR, ER, ICU called with admits. I tried using childhood logic ... 'too many people at the party, not enough chairs'. Hell I even tried, "Look it ain't my fault you guys schedule 11 surgical cases one day, 8 the next and then wonder why there are no beds with 37 inpatients on a 40 bed unit? I mean really folks, take off your freaking shoes and count your toes. It isn't gonna work." And they didn't seem to get it.

Then there were the caregivers. How far can you stretch the care? How far can you stretch the nerves, the emotions and the simple backbreaking work that is health care today? By the time the day was over people who work with each other every day, people who genuinely care about each other were snapping and sniping. And worse yet, yelling at the charge nurse. It's difficult to keep everyone on an even keel, salving frazzled nerves, directing incoming and outgoing patient traffic. And then having 'the kids' yell ....

It was a day fraught with emotions. The sadness of an elderly woman who lost her husband of 60+ years, begging him to live. We sat at the nursing station and cried. The joy of booting an obnoxious patient out the door and sending her home to where she belongs. We stood at the window and waved her goodbye. The comfort of doggie kisses and hugs from the pet therapy hounds. We can sense the presence of a dog at 100 yards. The excitement of two codes and watching patients with new joints walk the floors.

And when the day was over and I handed off the book (and patients) to the incoming charge nurse I thought that all in all we'd survived and more than that we'd kept our heads when all about us were loosing theirs ... and that made us a great group of women.