I know that it is silly of me, especially since I went into cardiac nursing; but I have a rule. None of my patients is allowed to code when I am their nurse. I know that it is stupid. And inevitable. And has arguably happened already- but we will get there. ...... This post is about reputations and the aura that you project when you work.
I know that I sound woo-woo when I say it, but we all know that person that shit always happens to. The person that no matter how hard you try to give them a good assignment their night turns to crap. The nurse whose patients always go d0wn the tubes. The person who is always working when the codes happen.
I am not saying that they are angels of death, that they are killing the patient; just that they are shit magnets. After a while if you see that you are on the schedule with them you just take a deep breath and think "here we go again....."
I have a colleague like that. He even acknowledges the bad luck. Calls himself "Black Cloud-Stinky Finger" I understand the Black Cloud part- never wanted to know about the second part. I think that after a while of being teased as the unit bad luck charm that he just decided to embrace the reputation and go with it.
He and I talked about his reputation several times, and I talked about my rule. Someday I will talk about my one "maybe' code since it is a freaky story..... Anyway, I said that I was going to try to embrace the opposite reputation- that I wanted to be the person that people thought of as the person that brought stability and calm shifts to the unit. I asked him and another friend on the unit to help me think of a name.
Everyone kept thinking of drug names- "The Ativan Kid" "Slow ride with Haldol". But that wasn't what I was looking for. I didn't want to be associated with the crazy patients, but the stable ones. I eventually decided to just go for the polar opposite of my friend's nickname
Rainbow Bright
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