I got to be useful today
Most of you know that at work I am a wheelchair jockey, a Glorified people pusher if you will. My job isn't anything exciting, but it does have it's own importance. Anywho, today I got to help out in something that involves the kind of excitement reserved for outside the hospital normally.
A gentleman on the physical rehab unit decided that he was going to practice his stair exercises all by himself. He wheeled himself in his wheelchair off the unit and to a stairwell on the far South end of the floor, mind you the South end of the 4'th floor is basically abandoned on the weekends as it is all office space used M-F. As he entered the stairwell the guy got up out of his chair, grabbed the guard rail and proceeded to work on going up stairs. This is a normal thing physical therapy patients must do, with a staff member present of course. He got up the first set of stairs to the landing between the 4'th and 5'th floors just fine. However, going from the landing to the 5'th floor was not as successful a venture as the first batch of stairs was. He got about half-way up and fell back down to the landing. As far as staff can gather it happened sometime around 9am or shortly after. He was in his room at 8:45am but missing when they looked for him at 9am. A staff member for the NICU found him at about 9:45 as she was heading downstairs for a smoke. 4E had been looking for the guy, but why would they logically check the other end of the building? Anywho, he was awake and what-not but the NICU RN called a code blue. Enter people from around the whole building; I was one of them. Most everyone who came left as soon as they realized it wasn't a real code. ER was bringing up a stretcher, a backboard, and a C-spine collar. Seeing as how we just finished covering this in class I figured now was as good a time as any to try it out. I assisted in straightening out the guy, collaring him, boarding him, carrying him up the stairs to the waiting cart(the code was called on 5 so the cart was taken to 5 rather then 4) and taking him down to Radiology. The end result, a compression fracture of L-2. It was cool; I got to be helpful, try out/practice some stuff from EMS class, show off a bit actually earning some respect that Transporters don't get, and for the first time in a long time around here I felt like I made a difference.
A gentleman on the physical rehab unit decided that he was going to practice his stair exercises all by himself. He wheeled himself in his wheelchair off the unit and to a stairwell on the far South end of the floor, mind you the South end of the 4'th floor is basically abandoned on the weekends as it is all office space used M-F. As he entered the stairwell the guy got up out of his chair, grabbed the guard rail and proceeded to work on going up stairs. This is a normal thing physical therapy patients must do, with a staff member present of course. He got up the first set of stairs to the landing between the 4'th and 5'th floors just fine. However, going from the landing to the 5'th floor was not as successful a venture as the first batch of stairs was. He got about half-way up and fell back down to the landing. As far as staff can gather it happened sometime around 9am or shortly after. He was in his room at 8:45am but missing when they looked for him at 9am. A staff member for the NICU found him at about 9:45 as she was heading downstairs for a smoke. 4E had been looking for the guy, but why would they logically check the other end of the building? Anywho, he was awake and what-not but the NICU RN called a code blue. Enter people from around the whole building; I was one of them. Most everyone who came left as soon as they realized it wasn't a real code. ER was bringing up a stretcher, a backboard, and a C-spine collar. Seeing as how we just finished covering this in class I figured now was as good a time as any to try it out. I assisted in straightening out the guy, collaring him, boarding him, carrying him up the stairs to the waiting cart(the code was called on 5 so the cart was taken to 5 rather then 4) and taking him down to Radiology. The end result, a compression fracture of L-2. It was cool; I got to be helpful, try out/practice some stuff from EMS class, show off a bit actually earning some respect that Transporters don't get, and for the first time in a long time around here I felt like I made a difference.