A matter of perspective

I called the jail yesterday to follow up on a client who was about to be released. The phone was answered by the perkiest male voice I've ever heard.

"Hi, this is Officer Perky! It's a great day here at Random County Correctional Center!"

"This is HelloNurse calling from County Mental Health about Bonnie Parker's scheduled release tomorrow... What do they put in the coffee over there at the jail? It sounds like you're having way more fun with your job than I am with mine today."

Pause. It lasted so long I almost thought we'd been disconnected until Officer Perky spoke again. "Actually the coffee here is pretty terrible. It's so bad that everything else is wonderful in comparison!"

Chart check quote of the week

"The client is a 48 year old white male, married once, divorced once, currently living under a tree."

Chart check quote of the week

For a developmentally disabled client: "Her appetite is increased. The staff say she will eat handfuls of ketchup when they're not looking."

I know people do strange things, but eeww!

Hope my boss isn't taping my calls

A large part of my job is answering phone calls from patients. Sometimes I find myself giving advice that isn't directly related to their current problem, but also needs to be said. My nursing instructors would call this "health teaching," but they probably wouldn't have found themselves fielding calls from inebriated patients seeking more benzodiazepines.

Like on Friday:
Ms. Issues: "When is Mr. Casemanager coming by to bring me my medications? I'm having a bad mental health and anxiety day and really need my Xanax."
I could tell from the way she was slurring her words that she had been drinking. "Ms. Issues, can you tell me what you've had to drink today?"
MI: "Two beers--I know I need to quit, but--"
Me: "Actually, I'm way more concerned that it's four in the afternoon and that's all you've had to drink for fluids. Can you tell me anything that you've had to drink today that didn't have alcohol in it?"
MI: "Uh.... No, can't think of anything."
Me: "Have you had anything to eat today?"
MI: "Nope. So is Mr. Casemanager coming by today or not? I'm really having a bad mental health day and need my Xanax."
Me: "He'll be by at his usual time, but drinking on an empty stomach usually leads to puking, and then you'll really be having a bad mental health day. Can you fix yourself some toast and drink some water after you hang up with me?"
"Yeah, I can do that. Tell Mr. Casemanager I said hi!"

A nurse is a nurse is a nurse...

When I worked in hospitals, there was always a lot of other nurses around to talk to. If Dori wasn't available to answer a quick question, Jim was. If Janice wouldn't help me rob a bank, Ariel would. That sort of thing.

But here at Random County Mental Health, it's just me and GoodbyeNurse. He's a good nurse and a great co-worker, but really doesn't talk much. (I suppose I could always call up the nurses across the street at Random County Public Health if I want to chat with other nurses, but it'd be kind of weird.) One day, I hope to have a conversation with him that isn't work-related that lasts for more than three sentences.

Other than the fact that we're both breathing and we both have a BSN, GoodbyeNurse and I really don't have anything in common. He's a concrete-sequential thinker, organized, quiet, methodical, not one for idle chatter, always spell-checks his e-mails, and enjoys running marathons on his day off. I'm the poster child for high-functioning adult ADHD, embrace being abstract-random like it's a religion, distractable, chatty, have transformed sweet-talking pharmacies into delivering medications to our office into an art form, and will only be found running if someone is chasing me with a weapon. (Have I mentioned tht he doesn't talk much? It's driving me nuts.)

There's days when we work together really well. We split the work load evenly, and cover for the gaps in each other's skill set. It's like yin and yang.

And then there's days (usually the ones where we're forced to share an office space, because neither of us "play well with others") where it's a lot more like Tom and Jerry.

Who took my pen?

I can be a bit absent-minded at times. Having a variable schedule that involves traveling between three different offices does not help. There's days when the only way I remember what town I'm supposed to be working in is because the clerical staff tells me.

I misplace a lot of things as well. I've lost everything from jewelry to eyeglasses, but ink pens are the most common lost object. (In a job interview, I once responded to the "what would your co-workers say is your worst trait?" question with "I never know where my pen is and steal theirs.") I compensate by collecting pens and stashing jars of them at all the offices where I work. As long as it writes, I'm not picky.

GoodbyeNurse has a different approach to ink pens. I walked into the County Seat RCMH office yesterday to find him sorting all the pens in the nursing office by color.

"I don't know why we have so many nonstandard pens!" he exclaimed.

Due to the lack of caffeine in my system, I was unable to come up with a response to his comment. I just stared at him.

He apparently took my slack-jawed silence for agreement. "I was taught in nursing school that blue and black ink are the only appropriate color for nursing documentation, so I don't know why we have so many different colors of pen."

"Maybe it's because most of this office's communication is via sticky notes. As long as they're legible, no one cares what color the ink is."

(In retrospect, I should have pointed out that all of our nursing documentation is done on the computer, so the color of the office ink pens is a moot point. Instead, I settled for taking all of the "nonstandard pens" and caching them in my other office, just in case.)

Just another Monday

On Monday, as I always do, I checked the jail mugshot website to see if any of my patients were guests of the Random County Correctional Center (known around here as "the Country Club.")
Then, I called IntimidatingNurse at the jail to see how Bonnie Parker was doing.

The receptionist recognized me by my voice alone when I said hello and immediately put me through.

"Yeah, Bonnie's a bit of a handful, but she stops talking to invisible people as soon as no one's watching her, so we think it's kind of behavioral instead of mental health-related. Don't worry, I've already got her scheduled for a full assessment with IntimidatingShrink this afternoon."

I never dreamed when I applied for this job that I'd be on a first-name basis with the staff of all the local homeless shelters, psych wards (although I really should have seen that one coming,)
and the jail.