Nightmare at Davis (Part 2)

The mystery of the dirty underpants remained unsolved as day turned to night.   I didn’t get much sleep, but I didn’t expect to. My night nurse was kind.  With all the fluids I was getting through the IV plus what I was drinking to combat a dry mouth, she spent a lot of time helping me to the bathroom.

The next shift change brought my next nightmare: Lupe, my nurse. She was terrible.  I try to keep these blog posts to 500 words, so I can’t go into detail.  It would be kind to just say she was lazy.  She was incompetent.  Trust me when I say the example I’m citing is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.  

It was time for me to take a shower but I still had my IV in my hand, so it needed to be capped. Lupe disconnected the tubing, but rather than put a cap on it, she covered the end with the wrapper from an alcohol wipe and said I was good to go.  I told her I wasn’t comfortable with that - showers are dirty places and there was a straight line into my blood vein.  I told her I wanted a cap.  She got in my face and asked if I’d ever heard of alcohol and its sterilizing qualities.  I told her I wanted a cap.  She left to get one, but when she came back she told me to not be surprised if she “accidentally” pulled out my IV while putting the cap on.

At this point I had had enough.  I told her to leave my room and send in her supervisor.  I got a new and competent nurse who put a cap on my IV and also had a cheery disposition.  Yay for ShaNae! The supervisor came and she apologized for Lupe and said she needed some re-educating.  She had heard about the mystery underpants but had no answers.

I came home from the hospital that afternoon.  I’ve chatted with the patient advocate, Michael Paul, three times since then.  He called on Friday with the underpants mystery solved.  It seems that while I was on the operating table my hospital bed was in the hall waiting for me.  Meanwhile, a man was taken to the operating room next door.  When he went to surgery it was discovered that he hadn’t taken off his underpants.  Someone removed them, and rather than following hospital policy and placing them in a plastic bag labeled with the patient’s name, he or she threw them on the hospital bed in the hall - my bed. Michael Paul said they would be re-educating the staff on proper procedure.

He also said Lupe had received a written reprimand in her file for the IV fiasco.  He said she would be re-educated on the proper procedure.  It seems like the proper procedure is the best kept secret at Davis Hospital.