SAN DIEGO, CA – This morning at Southern California Hospital, RN Craig Needstapee became alarmed when at seven thirty in the morning, he called the ICU to let them know about a pending admission and he was told to just send the patient right up.
Shocked with disbelief, he knew something was not right. He immediately called 911 and the police sent the SWAT team, who found an un-intubated patient holding the ICU hostage, demanding “bathroom rights” and refusing both a Foley and a sedative.
RN Needstappee said, “I was shaken. I expected to be told to call-back ‘after change of shift,’ you know the usual, like 9 or 10 a.m. The charge nurse didn’t even want to know the patient’s bee-sting history or the contents of his last 7 meals! I knew something was wrong, so I called 911. The 911 operator was skeptical at first, like she didn’t get what the big deal was, until I told her that the ICU accepting a patient during turnover was like a beat-cop refusing overtime. She then sent the SWAT team, and good thing too!”
On arrival, the SWAT team found patient John Freeman calmly urinating in his bedside commode while the entire ICU staff cowered in the break room. Fortunately, they had food from their daily pot-luck and Oprah re-runs to sustain them during their ordeal.
The charge nurse, John Nowork, told GomerBlog, “I was just planning out our 6 daily breaks when Mr. Freeman, who wasn’t intubated like ICU patients should be, started demanding to go to the bathroom. He wouldn’t stop, even when we told him we were going to give him a Foley so he wouldn’t have to move. His nurse became frightened at the noise coming out of his un-plugged orifice [mouth] and ran out of the room to call a code green, or yellow or um, brown, whatever. Then he did something impossible! He jumped over the rail! Those are restraints, or at least the Joint Commission says so!”
Police spokesman, Sergeant Thinbluline, told us, “After a call for help from the ER, we found the ICU staff held at bay by a standing and talking patient. We were able to calm the situation by asking him nicely to get back into bed. We then asked to talk to his admitting doctor, who agreed to move him to a floor that can take care of conscious un-intubated patients. However, on our way out, we did notice open containers at the nurse’s station. We are having them printed, and the violators will be brought to justice by the Joint Commission to prevent further deaths.”
At 1 p.m., long after the SWAT team had left, RN Needstapee, the ER nurse added, “The ICU still hasn’t truly accepted our patient. Now they’re saying it’s because they are still ‘cleaning up’ after the ‘incident.’ So, I took out all the patient’s good 16g IVs and put in a 22g IV just barely hanging in the AC vein.”
