This is where Calleo will go over all the fun and interesting stuff he encounters in the healthcare system of New York. Frustrations, inspirations, and issues. Calleo will not use the names of any co-workers or patients or post pictures of hectic events (i.e. nurses, doctors, patients, security, or support staff losing it and going berserk)

Essentially . . . shop talk!

Update May 12th 2020:

Here’s a priceless quote from one of the patients, “I’m not drug-seeking, but I’m going to need toradol and morphine stat, asshole!”

Our ER has seen an increase in patient boarders because for some reason admission to the hospital is requiring two Covid tests. I’m not sure why, I’m guessing it has something to do with cohorting patients with Covid, but also maybe due to the accuracy of the tests. The hospital is trying to open for some spinal surgeries, but there’s been a huge disruption to the normal operations of the hospital and I can only imagine administration is trying to figure out how to restructure units and/or open old units back up. Either way, ER staff are not happy because we are boarding more patients and getting influx of homeless at night. Better than Covid right? Well, we’ll see.
Update April 23rd 2020: I could definitely see today how there were some problems facing the ER I was in during the Covid-surge. 1) The staff in the ER have just started EPIC, like they only have 4 months experience with it. So I can imagine during the horrendous surge in March all the medical personnel must have literally been going insane. 2) The ER is cramped, they went from having about 4 code carts to having 15+. In fact there are so many code carts now that the checkoffs can’t be done in a timely manner 3) Supplies are at a premium, as it got busier throughout the day I found at soon what the hot items are that sometimes go missing and need to be restocked. 4) I became and EKG tech today, I guess nurses and techs do the EKGs. There’ll be more stuff as I delve deeper.
Update April 17th 12:39PM: Validation at last! My nursing recruiter has said that I have been communicating clearly and that the slip ups have not been my fault and that she has escalated my issues with leadership.

April 17, 2020: So I joined the EPIC training again today and something did not seem right. I completed all the e-learning modules for EPIC ASAP, the system that they use in the ER, but I was again enrolled in the “Inpatient Nursing” EPIC class despite THE FACT, that I asked my orientation team multiple times if they had enrolled me in the correct class. They kept saying yes, but lo and behold . . . I was not. It took an email chain of about 30 emails for them to realize this. My nurse recruiter is talking to leadership in the travel agency about how poorly this training has gone. Everything else is done and ready to go; I’m actually super-ready, excited to start work, but these bureaucratic hurdles are frustrating. Anyway, my recruiter assured me that this is not my fault and I communicated clearly on my end. It’s a bit saddening that the training team did not listen to me or admit that they made a mistake; I was not trying to play the blame game, but finally I had to get pretty stern about my disappointment with the process. Anyway, that should be fixed. Who knows when my first shift will be. I will certainly tell you when it happens. Also frustrating, is the fact I KNOW EPIC really well both inpatient and ER setting screens and these trainings are the only thing holding me back. Hmmm, is this some sort of cruel joke?

April 16, 2020:

My travel nursing agency, American Mobile Nursing, finally got my start date straightened out and now I am going forward with orientation from scratch. I got paid on Monday for the orientation I did then so I have most of the work done already and I got my FIT test, took care of my badge, and did a lot of other busy work so today will be pretty mild. I just have to go over some aspects of the orientation and make sure I know the policies i.e. “you don’t need a doctor’s order to d/c a foley,” hypoglycemia protocol, etc. I do have to do all these annoying POCT quizzes, but they’re pretty easy and actually quite similar if not the same as the stuff we use at Sacred Heart i.e. clinitek urine stick machine, glucometer, etc. Okay that’s it for today! Tomorrow I have medical record training for our favorite EMR . . . EPIC, so that should go smoothly too.
Update April 15th 7:22pm: I finally got official orientation materials and will start again tomorrow

April 15, 2020:

So I finally came to the conclusion yesterday that my orientation was a disaster and I was wondering why. One of my traveler nurse friends was helping me by forwarding her emails to me, but I finally hit a wall when I didn’t have the User ID or password for the hospital system that I’m at and I joined a meeting for EPIC training pertaining to Med/Surg and ICU, which was not for me since I am going to be in the ER.

So I’ve been on the phone constantly trying to talk to different travel nurses and find out what is going on, then I contacted my recruiter and she finally revealed that she had never received confirmation from the hospital about my new start date of April 13th. So now the “local” team is scrambling around trying to get me a Username and password for the hospital system so I can continue with my orientation. I got a lot of the things out of the way like FIT testing and policies and some other stuff, and luckily (or unluckily) I will be using EPIC so there won’t be too much new stuff. So I got another day to relax and it was actually pretty good. I hope that I can get my first day on the unit on Sat or Sun. Stay tuned . . .

April 13, 2020:

Wow, today was so disorganized. I met a lot of travel nurses who were a little unsure how this is all going to turn out because . . .

1. Our virtual orientation meeting was supposed to start at 0800 using Microsoft Teams app, well that DID NOT happen. About 163 nurses all trying to join the same conference at one time quickly became a technical nightmare. It took me 2 hrs to connect to the conference and then they just said “okay we recorded the orientation information just look at it when you have time.” Okay, yeah so there were issues
2. I went to go get my badge at security only . . . the badge was not there and security said I would be assigned a temporary one when I get to the hospital and unit that I am going to work at . . . okay
3. Went to go do FIT testing for the respirators. First I was sent to one location and then told I needed to go to employee health to fill out a form that they would then fax to the location I was already at. Made no sense. So I went to employee health with 3 other nurses we filled out the form, talked to a few people, got some signatures, then they took the forms from us and we were told to go back to the other area to get my FIT test. So it took about an hour.
4. Was supposed to do POCT testing for the equipment used in the ER, well there was a sign on the lab door saying “POCT is at max capacity, please reach out to your agency for rescheduling.” Okay . . .
5. I am supposed to have EMR (electronic medical record) training tomorrow, but the educators have FAILED to get me the email with the information about where to go and what to do. Luckily we’re using EPIC so I think I’ll be good. A lot of nurses are kinda in the dark about what tomorrow’s orientation will entail. We have a vague idea based on the schedule handed to us today, but nothing solid. There’s definitely a problem with the influx of so many nurses and how to get them all on board. FUN!
6. I’m just going to plan to start making calls and sending emails and trying to get to where I need to be at 0800. What else can I do? Any suggestions?