Sexual assault

I am awoken at 0330 to voice on the other end of the phone. A woman has been sexual assaulted and i need to come to town to examiner her. These calls always leave me with a sinking feeling. I do this work because someone needs to be there for these victims, but I wish that one day there would no longer be a need for my position. I doubt that that day will ever come. Statistics show that 50% of sexual assaults are not reported and that every 3 minutes someone is sexual assaulted. This is a shame. Even though most assaults are done my someone that knows the attacker, I have found that the most violent, dangerous, and life threatening victims that I examine are assaulted by strangers. (Please don't think that I am saying that known attackers are gentle, not all are). Thankfully, those assaults are not as prevalent as known attackers. This morning it was a stranger that had attack this woman. So, since I am knocking around the facts in my brain to unwind a bit. I thought I would post some stay safe information to maybe prevent at least one person from a stranger attack.

•In any situation you should always be aware of your surroundings.
•Stay in well-lit areas.
•Walk on the side of the street facing traffic. Walk confidently at a steady pace.
•Avoid walking were assailants can hide, such as doorways, bushes or alleys
•If you believe you are being followed, walk quickly to a lighted area and where there are people.
•If you believe a car is following you, turn around and walk in the opposite direction or on the other side of the street.
•If someone stops you and wants directions or anything else, reply to them from a distance. Do not get too close.
•If at any time you feel you are in danger or need help, attract people in any way you can. Scream as loud as you can. If you are carrying a self-defense product such as Mace, pepper spray or a stun gun, use it and run.
•When you are in your car, lock the doors. If you are not in your car, keep the doors locked so that no one is able to enter your car and hide in it.
•While walking to your car have your keys in hand and ready to unlock the door. Before you get in your car look inside to make sure no one is hiding inside.
•While driving, if you think you are being followed, either drive to a well-lit public area or drive to a police station.
•If your car breaks down, open the hood and attach a white cloth to the antenna and get back in your car and lock the doors. If someone stops to help, remain in your car with the doors locked and ask them to call the police.

Why is everything always wrong in the newspaper?

Today I found out that something was actually done to help protect a child that I filed a mandatory report on. I have been watching all over the news about a sex offender that was arrested, but never linked him to the report that I had made well over a month ago. It is great that something was done, but what frustrates me is that the facts behind the report that I filed were listed in the paper wrong, over and over again. The police report made it look like the cop found out about a crime due to a nurse "misunderstanding" the facts and mandatory reporting another possible abuse case. So frustrating. Thank god for laws that protect us when we mandatory report. I hope that officer feels good about the job he did making nurses look like idiots. At least something was done to protect that child. No matter how it came about.

Are you kidding me--- RANT

I just love being short staffed!!! I wish the suits could explain to me how in the world they expect someone not to be killed without staff. Over the past year, they cut or per diem, forced overtime, then cut overtime. Then they took away our sick time, decreased our PTO time, cut our hours, laid off staff, and told us if we had over time that we could be fired. Now, we are forced overtime again. I give up, are they kidding me, do they really think that what they are doing is staff. Today for example, had 3 resp distresses that we placed on vents, 2 with norepi, one with dopamine. Another one sent the to cath lab, which I had everything done in 19min (one heck of door to balloon). had 2 overdoses and one that was status epilepticus. this was all before 1300. during this time, I had one tech and a emt student. So the question is, HOW IN THE HELL IS THIS SAFE STAFFING???? Okay, that is just my little rant.

Pulmonary Edema

And we wondered why they were so sob. This had an oh crap factor to it!!! Per protocol, had x-ray done prior to doc coming in room, when I saw it, I grabbed a doc fast. We have four on and the first one I saw got dragged into the room.... He was not so happy at the selection process :)

Moms

I have no clue why people are so stupid. Here are two examples:

Mother did not fill prescription for albuterol updraft, son has asthma attack, so instead bring to ER, she give a tap water updraft because it looks just like the albuterol. Kid gets to the ED, is suffering from hypoxia. We have child on a simple mask and child's O2 Sat's goes up to 98%, off of O2, Sat's drop to 79% and child becomes confused and screams nonstop because he is "seeing" snakes allover the room. Tell mother to keep O2 on or child will end up on a vent. So what does mom do???? you guess it, she takes off the O2 stating that child is not comfortable. She than sneaks out to smoke and comes running in when child ends up in resp distress, which leads to cardiac arrest, we code child and he survives, but is probably has anoxic brain...... WAY TO GO MOM!!!!

6 year old comes in the ER with her heel basically shave off. Ask mom what happened, she was playing on the steps and cut foot on piece of glass that she broke the day before. Mom was mad because she told the 6 year old to pick up the glass and she got what she deserved. My questions are why did the mom not be a mom and pick up the glass herself when it was broken? My god this was a child.