After a lovely trip to Ohio for the holidays, I am back in prison. I can't say that I'm glad to be back at work, but I'm working on my attitude as part of my new year's resolution. Some prisoners did remind me yesterday that I "was free" and should have had a great new year's, which I did.
I think the trifecta of a bad day for me in prison is the intersection of difficult patients, less than ideal nursing staff, and computer problems. I've hit 2/3 of those daily this week...but not the dreaded 3/3...yet...thankfully. (I'm sure there are many more serious things that could go wrong, but I'll just fret about the mundane, annoying things for now). There has been a shortage of nurses lately due to people quitting, being sick, and just not showing up, which leaves "agency nurses" (the locums of nursing, or travel nurses) and new prison nurses in training. This week is an exercise in patience.
Things improved a bit once my computer got fixed....just in time for the drill sargents to bust into the clinic yelling at the 9 youthful offenders I had to examine. I usually split the exams with a nurse practitioner, but she wasn't in. Today I learned several things: the average pulse of a youthful offender is about 102. Secondly, I can reduce the overuse of "ma'am, yes ma'am" by telling the offenders to cut out the ma'ams at the beginning of our visit. Simple, but brilliant! It also seemed to quiet the guards during my exam, making our interaction feel more clinical and less tense for me and the patients. (As soon as they left the exam room, the guards would start up again with the "stop eyeballing me! Toes to the wall!") I can't help but feel bad for those kids, even if they are hardened teenage criminals.
I was pleased that a teenager on dialysis didn't show up for a physical today. I heard he is still coming despite many attempts to prevent him from the YOS program. Dialysis? Boot camp? I just don't think those are compatible. Next month I'm going to have a fit if I see a kid in a yellow jumpsuit with a canteen over his head and a palpable thrill in his arm...
Now googling "trifecta" and "palpable thrill"...
ReplyDeleteFor those of you who just glossed over these impalpable words, I'm doing the grunt work for you.
Trifecta: — n 1. a form of betting in which the punter selects the first three place-winners in a horse race in the correct order 2. any achievement involving three successful outcomes
Palpable thrill:
"Heart murmurs are vibrations caused by disturbed blood flow through the heart...The heart murmurs are graded according to how loud they sound and if they are accompanied by a "palpable thrill." A "palpable thrill" means that the vibration is strong enough that it actually can be felt through the animal's [human's] chest wall."
http://www.bobmckee.com/Client%20Info/Cardiac/Murmurs.html