Surfing the net lately

Ever played with that feature on blogger "next blog" that just randomly picks blogs for you to peruse. On those lazy mornings when I am home alone, sometimes I do that see what I'll find. Sometimes I actually will go to the links some of my family and friends send me in their joke/junk emails. You know, those emails that have been forwarded a ba-zillion times and seem to make the circuit every year. Sometimes I search for old 80s videos on youtube. Well, a few interesting sites came across my computer this week.

Dirty Car Art. Yep, that is right. I guy creates masterpieces in the grime left in your windows after not washing your car for like a year. Check it out: http://www.dirtycarart.com/

Women Suffragates

. I have been a registered voter since I turned 18. I have voted in every election except one year where I had moved and hadn't re-registered. That being said, I had completely forgotten the story of the women who fought for my right to vote. Some info is available here: http://www.hbo.com/films/ironjawedangels/history/

After going to this site, I stumbled across this picture and had to post it here. I am a democrat and was suprised by this picture. I think I need to research the donkey logo and party history a bit more. Another site to use for more info on this story is here: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

Cell Phone Art. It is a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately because I see everywhere people taking pictures and videos with their cell phones. I am very guilty of this activity as well and started looking for some stuff on cell phone art. I found this site that actually is sponsoring a contest hosted by one of the Coppolas. http://www.pahnation.com/awards_cellphone.php Then this guy creates art from using the actual phones : http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5966005 And lastly, this was the kind of site I really wanted to find. All pictures taken of random things around the city using a cell phone http://www.sleepyurbanite.com/

And lastly, I'll share a phone photo I took last night watching football. Yes, it is British beer mixed with American football. I like a little irony and good beer in my life. Unfortunately the beer wasn't good enough to make the Raider game enjoyable.

Bad word problems make me all grumpy

Things were hopping at work yesterday. If a patient wasn't leaving the unit for a procedure, they were doing a procedure at bedside. I was stuck as the lunch/ break nurse. Thank goodness we didn't have any codes or RRT calls though, only a couple admissions and transfers. I was running almost all day which makes a 12 hour shift go hella-fast. It was nice considering it has been so slow lately.

However, one of the dreaded responsibilities of the lunch/break nurse is to do patient care assignments for the next shift. That means I have to look at the staffing sheet to determine who is coming and who is supposed to be the lunch/break nurse for the next shift. We also then have to factor in who is regular staff, per diem, traveler (contract nurse only working for us for a few weeks) and preceptee (a new hire to the unit that needs training and assigned to a regular staffer, who hopefully has an interesting assignment to promote learning). Other factors to consider is how sick are the patients, are they on isolation, on a ventilator and how close the patients' rooms are to each other so that the nurses can better see their patients. Additionally, unless you have had special training, certain types of patients, like our stroke patients or ones that came in for stent placement, can't be assigned to you. Plus, if you have staff that are coming in that worked the day before, they typically like to have their same patients back. Sound hard? It kind of is, but it gets worse. You then have to factor in the attitudes of people when they show up and complain about their assignments. Sounds like one of those math word problems from hell that we had to solve in Algebra class.

Well, I tried to factor in all those things when I did the assignments and I still had problems. It didn't help that we had a very sick patient that was on their way to us that had to go to a specially trained nurse that ended up dying around 7:20pm before making it to our unit (Shift change occurs between 7-7:30pm). That added to even more assignment shuffling. Lots of gripes. I think even one person in particular was mad at me when I left even after I had made multiple changes to the assignments based on the comments that started flying at 7pm. So, I left feeling a lot of angst.

I understand why most of our senior staff dislike the lunch/break position. I also understand even more how nice it must be when I show up and take any assignment they throw at me without complaining, even if it is lunch/break nurse. I am pretty sure I have grumbled about assignments in the past, but I take them anyway. I'll try next time to not even grumble.