Hiding His Laughter
I worked in an emergency room (ER) for six years. Every person who has worked in the ER knows that Mondays are the busiest days of the week, and also when all the crazies come out. This day was no different.
I worked as a nurse in triage, where you initially get assessed in the front before going to the back. Here we determine who needs to go back first and who can wait. It’s NOT a first-come, first-serve situation as most people think.
We had a few stretchers in the front for people who needed to be monitored a little closer or needed IVs, blood draws, labs. There were six stretchers, but this day was so busy that all stretchers were filled, plus five more in the hallway.
This lady comes in on an ambulance but because her symptoms did not indicate an emergency she was put in stretcher triage to wait her turn. To be fair, she was in a lot of pain. After an assessment, I recognized her symptoms as being caused by gallstones (painful but not life-threatening).
We put her on a stretcher, started an IV, drew labs, and hooked her up to the monitor just in case. A few minutes later, the patient’s daughter comes in the front door. One look at her and we knew she would cause problems. She had everything from the shoes to the haircut. A classic rich Karen.
When she saw that her mom was still in the front and hadn’t seen a doctor yet she started screaming that she knew the CEO of the hospital and that we would all be fired if we didn’t get her mom back to see a doctor RIGHT NOW!
We explained that her mom has a history of gallstones and even the patient was saying that she has had this pain many times because of the gallstones. We explained about being really busy and that there were no rooms available in the back and will get her back as soon as we could.
She eventually calmed down but was still antsy. About an hour later another patient comes in and was put on the stretcher beside the mother and her daughter. This patient had worrying complaints, but on initial assessment, we could not find anything wrong.
However, as a nurse, you learn to ALWAYS trust your gut. When your gut sounds an alarm, you listen. Something about this patient was setting my alarm bells off but all his vitals were normal and I had no solid evidence to declare him an emergency.
I hooked him up to the monitor and kept a very close eye on him. I let the charge nurse know of my concerns and she said to let her know as soon as something changes. Not five minutes later, something changed.
Now, at this time I should explain that this hospital was a level 1 trauma center, meaning we get all the bad cases from car crashes to shot victims. Since we had to be ready for any traumas, we had a room with three beds that was closed off from the rest of the beds because traumas usually involved a lot of people and a lot of blood.
Even on busy days like this one, those rooms were empty unless there was a trauma patient. Now, back to the second patient. I was taking the vital signs of the mother when I looked over to the second one.
I noticed a worrying change in his rhythm and stopped with the woman to start assessing him to see what was going on. Well, that did not sit well with the daughter. She actually grabbed my arm and told me to finish with her mom. I jerked my arm free and said I had to make sure the man was OK.
As I turned around, his rhythm went life-threatening. I called the charge nurse to inform her of his condition, all the while unhooking him from the monitor and throwing his bed into drive. This is where the crazy ramped up.
As I started pushing him back, the daughter actually jumps in front of the stretcher and stops it. She’s screaming that her mom was here first and needed to be seen before. She kept screaming that I was a liar and that she was going to get me fired.
I’m usually a mild-tempered person, but knowing this guy was literally minutes from crashing, I said to the woman, “You have a choice: get out of my way or get run over.” I started pushing the stretcher forward.
Now, I’m really good at pushing stretchers fast and getting the patients where they needed to go in a hurry. The daughter tried to stand firm but she saw I wasn’t going to stop and jumped out of the way just as I was an inch from hitting her.
Unfortunately, she did not move fast enough and I ended up running over her foot. At this point, I didn’t care and got the patient back to the trauma room, leaving the daughter screaming and lying on the floor. We spent about 30 minutes on the patient but he ended up coding.
By the time I got back up front, the mother and daughter had been taken to the back to see a doctor. Still, my charge nurse warned me that they were filing a complaint against me. A few days later, the actual CEO of the hospital came to visit me on my next shift. He was known to be a kind and fair man.
Since this happened during a time before cameras were put in the ERs, he had to take what happened from word of mouth. Apparently, the daughter said I attacked her several times and put her mom’s life in danger by not assessing her properly and that I should be fired.
It turned out that the mother did actually have gallstones and nothing else. However, the daughter’s foot was broken due to me running over it. I calmly explained exactly what happened and that the daughter’s action might have ended up in the patient dying because of the delay she caused.
When I got to the part of what I said to her and running over her foot, the CEO actually started laughing. He then tried to cover his mouth to hide his laughter. He explained that the daughter was a friend of his sister’s and he knows exactly what kind of person she is.
Not only did I not get fired that day, but he also put a personal note in my file praising my actions. On my next review, I got a large raise and a bonus thanks to the CEO’s note. Story credit: Reddit / Nemoiimya