Adventures in Nursing

Tuesday evening I was at yet another clinical. This time I was on the Mental Health floor. I'd been waiting for a couple of weeks to sit in on a patient admit which is really just an interview with a new patient to get background information. I'm standing by the nurses' station and my teacher points out a woman in a white jacket and says "Holly, go with her". I think, "Yeah, an admit" and off we go down 5 flights of stairs. I notice that this woman is hurrying, then all of a sudden she's running and I'm completely confused. An admit is not an emergency situation. "Maybe she just doesn't like to waste time," I think. We turn the final corner and the woman I'm with ushers me into the back corner of a surgical suite.

In this room are about twelve people. Half of them are wearing lead vests. In the center of the room is a table and on top of the table are two people. One is lying flat with a large blue drape over her and the other is a nurse pushing very hard on the chest of the first. A light bulb goes off and I know why the room is so full of people, this is a code.

As it happened, the woman on the table was there to have a cardiac procedure done. During the procedure she threw a clot (a blood clot) and it sent her into cardiac arrest. When a code is called nurses from the ER and the Critical Care Unit rush in to help. The six in the vests were the original cardiac team who are now standing back until the woman is brought back.

The CPR wasn't working so they needed to shock her. She already had the pads attached (this is standard procedure) so they charged it up and shocked her. I was stunned. Her back arched off the table, just like on T.V. Now she had a rhythm, but she wasn't breathing well, so they had to intubate her (this is where they put a tube down a patient's throat and have a machine breathe for the patient). The doctor put a scope in her mouth and proceeded to feed the tube down her throat. This is not a smooth procedure. There were times I heard scraping sounds and my throat burned in response.

Now that her vitals are under control, the emergency team goes back to their units and the cardiac team is ready to continue. I'm sent to the viewing room adjacent to the suite. Through a window I can see the procure, on the monitor I can see the patient's heart. Amazing. As dye is pushed through her arteries they light up on the screen. The technician rewinds the tape and I can see exactly where the original problem was, where the clots formed, and when they dislodged. All of this is made possible because the cardiologist has fed a scope up through an artery in the woman's groin and up to her heart.

The procedure will continue for at least another hour and the emergency has passed so I am taken back up to the Mental Health floor. My instructor greets me and laughs because my eyes are as big as dinner plates. She asks, "How was it?". I respond, "Crazy cool". She laughs again, and I am hooked. This is the drug of choice for me, adrenaline. I want to be an ER nurse.