The Crash Cart

So last night was by far one of the most hysterical nights of my life!!! By hysterical I mean, if I didn't start laughing (and stay laughing) I would have ended up in tears. And I hate to cry... for any reason... but especially out of frustration. At the end of my shift one of the tech's told me that I looked tired. Well.... YEAH, but thank you... I look like shit!

I will have many blog postings about last night... but I feel that I must start with the Crash Cart story... because it makes the least amount of sense to me. And it really was the starting point of my night. BTW, for my non-medical readers, the Crash Cart is the cart that they bring into the room when a patient has stopped being alive. It has the shock paddles (you know the medical shows, when they yell "clear") and all the other fun gadgets and drugs that we use to restart a life.

Well, this evening, on my ventures through my nursing unit I noticed that the crash cart was looking a little wonky... so I went to do my check on it and found that it had been opened and not put back together and locked. Which is unusual, but not altogether impossible, sometimes in a pinch we will break into the cart to find a piece of equipment that seems to be eluding us. But generally, we immediately return to the cart and replace the borrowed item with a new one and lock the cart back up. And to add to my dismay, someone had done me the favor of pulling all of the latex gloves OUT of the box and leaving them strewn all over the cart. Helpful... really. So I clean up the situation and put the cart back together. (For those of you who have had to do a cart check... tedious and time-sucking work).

So I walk up to some nurses on the unit and told them about what I found. To which one of the techs told me that he saw some group of ADULT visitors rifling through the cart.

Well... that changes my opinion of a few things... including how my friday night was going to go.

First... WHY the hell would you see something like this and not a) stop them or b) tell someone else so that they could stop them!!

Two... as a visitor, WTF do you want that could possibly be in a crash cart? And... if you were looking for drugs... the only ones that we really have will either stop your beating heart, start your non-beating heart, put you in a coma (which will stop your breathing), and other such non-entertaining medications. And to top it off, the drug section of the cart... which is the visible TOP of the cart, is still sealed and safe. So the visitors were rifling through the drawers for what??

Three... who has the balls to just break into a cart in a nursing unit with people milling around 24/ 7, looking for some unknown medical equipment. (But then again... they did it, witnessed, and got away with it.)

And Four... these visitors were adults. Adults!!! Aren't they supposed to know better?? Another fine example.

So... deep breath... WELCOME FRIDAY NIGHT.