Thursday, February 3, 2011

Hospital Dorm Life

When it snows everything shuts down...everything but medical facilities. Life goes on for these people and patients.
First question: How many people does it take to run a hospital?
In order to have enough people to work both day and night, they must have enough dr's, nurses, pharmacists, cafeteria workers, housekeeping, etc to run for a full 24 hrs. That means two shifts worth of people. For example, to properly operate the 8th floor (the floor I work on) we need 11 nurses for day and 11 for night. That's 22 nurses for one floor not counting housekeeping and doctors. That's ALOT of people for the whole hospital!!! 
Second question: How does a facility get THAT many people to stay?
Glad you asked, they call a CODE YELLOW (i now HATE the color yellow). A code yellow represents an internal disaster, meaning, we need people here to take care of patients. 
Third question: So you stay there, like eat, sleep, pee, shower, brush your teeth, change in front of the girls you work with???
Yes, I did all of those things.
Forth question: Where do you do all of those things?
We stayed in conference rooms, offices, anywhere you could find an empty spot. They provided cots to sleep on. I was lucky and got to sleep on a lazy boy that popped back to the upright position when i moved the first night and an air mattress the second night. The conference room I stayed in was a couple of doors down from the patient's rooms that I took care of for two days. I was forced to walk my pretty little I-look-like-death hinny down the hall where i was expected to be a nurse to take a shower, potty, everything! 
Fifth question: What about food? That's the most important part.
They were generous enough to provide us with free meals for almost 2 days. It was decent food. I was weird seeing EVERYONE you work with doing normal every day activities. It was like college again except in a professional setting and outside is off limits!

That is Hospital Dorm Life for you. As for today, I'm so thankful to be in my PJ's, on the couch, watching movies, eating anything I want, drinking hot drinks, shopping online, downloading music, and looking at the pretty snow safe and sound! 

2 comments:

  1. You are such a trooper! Good job Nurse Amy!

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  2. Amen Keisha! You are a better man (woman... but man always sounds better in this context) than I am!

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