O Brave New World

ThoroughDoc is gone.

Damn, I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye, or blog about her, or anything.

Here’s the deal. ThoroughDoc is thorough. CNAs hate her–she asks specific questions about patients that they could only know if they’ve actually, you know, seen the patient. If she writes “strict I/Os”, she expects them to be charted every hour…not when you feel like it, not once per shift, but every hour, and damn if she will not be checking on you!

Expected we monitor techs (oh, yeah, that’s happened, too. I work in the ICU as a monitor tech now, yeah!) to be able to tell her, in great detail, exactly what the patient had been doing…how frequent are the PVCs, what do you mean by “occasional”? Thought a unit secretary should know basic things about the patient’s color, day, diet, etc.

I miss her. She was so good, didn’t miss a thing, wasn’t afraid to chafe the ass of the rad.tech to get a scan read on a weekend, and then chafe the ass of his superior to, ahem, motivate the nighthawk to get it done. Nurses think they advocate for their patients–could learn something from her, let me tell you.

She was so small, mousy, could’ve been a smokin’ hottie if she’d wanted, but she had other things on her mind–caring for patients as her first priority.

Dammit.

She’s gone, and this little sandy corner of the world got a lot less safe.