A horse! A horse!

A kingdom for a ten cc syringe (or horse, if you're Richard III).

So, how's about this: we're down over a dozen nurses, down two unit clerks (meaning we work days and evenings without one) and now we've gone through a third float unit clerk (she fell at work yesterday, and being quite pregnant, wasn't allowed to come back, poor thing). Nothing gets stocked in the med carts, and today I ran around trying to find 10cc syringes to push fucking Lasix.

I can't even tell you what wandering around and around and around and around the floor like some poor lost soul trying to find a chart that wasn't put away properly is like.

Actually, evening shift has been quieter without our regular unit clerk (who responds to the phone ringing with a frown and a raspy, "What's the noise?! " or "Oh that phone! I wish it would quit ringing!" This is the same person that every time you ask her how to use the fax machine, or some unit clerical duty, she frowns (again) and says, "Oh, I don't know." This is an employee of [community hospital] who's worked here for 27 years, interestingly enough.

We don't actually pay people to do their jobs as stated in the company manual. We pay them to do "other stuff" like chat on the phone with family members and close friends, make coffee, watch t.v. in the solarium/family room, etc. etc. We also pay them to say, "Oh, we don't do that."

Nurses are also, ironically, paid to do things that likewise seem out of our scope of practice, like answer phones, put together charts, mop floors, and strip beds of dirty linen (we've actually had umpteen conflicts with Housekeeping over whose job it is to strip beds after a discharge. Housekeeping likes to think it's our job.)

I'm getting to the point where my response to anything short of a real code is, "Whatever." Because basically, when I get someone on the phone to deal with the issue, their response is "Whatever."