Jozsa Night Moves

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4835-4610-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 171 Seiten

Night Moves is a frightening look at what could happen on night shift in a hospital when nurses get bored. The author, a nurse herself, brings the realism of experience to the story and paints a vivid picture. It almost makes one think twice before going into hospital as a patient. You may not survive the night. When the regular night shift nurses, Kate, Maria, Susan and Mandy play a joke on graduate nurse Christine Wilder on her first shift, they little realize that the joke would backfire and turn into a nightmare of terrifying consequences. Murder, assault, robbery, kidnap and blackmail are just a few of the horrors the nurses' face. Their friendship is tested as suspicion falls upon one of their number. Who can they trust? More importantly will they survive the night shift?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jozsa, Magda

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE

“Hey, Lou,” greeted Kate Baxter, as she signed on in the roster book.

“Kate,” replied Louise Hemmsly, the afternoon shift Associate Nurse Unit Man-ager. “Sleep well?”

Kate nodded. “Yep. It was nice and cool today. Good sleeping weather.” As she spoke she pinned back her shoulder length chocolate brown hair to get it off her face.

“I don’t know how you do it. I hate night shift. Never can sleep.”

“I don’t mind it. Been on it for years.”

“My point exactly.” Lou came over and pointed to a name on the roster. “You’ve got a new girl tonight. She’s a grad, and this is her first rotation onto nights.”

Kate grinned. “Yeah? Good. We’ll have some fun then.”

Louise returned her smile. “Now, now. Be nice. No sending her to fetch fallopi-an tubes.”

“Me? Would I do that?” “

“Yes, you would.”

“Well, she’s a grad. She should know what fallopian tubes are. That only works on students.”

“Try to control yourself, won’t you? We don’t want to scare her on her first nightshift.”

“That’s what first shifts are for,” replied Kate, her brown eyes twinkling with mischief. “We like to make them memorable. Come on, I’m early so we might as well check the drugs before handover.”

After they counted the drugs of addiction, they joined the other night nurses in the tearoom. Kate greeted them and sat down.

Over the next half hour they learned about their patients and any relevant changes.

After handover, Kate looked across at the new girl. “You’re Christine Wilder?”

The pretty, blue-eyed blonde that looked like she was barely out of her teens nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m Kate Baxter. I’m in charge overnight.”

“Hi, Kate,” responded Christine, liking the looks of the ANUM. She had a friendly smile, and didn’t look intimidating like some of the other associate unit manag-ers did.

“I’m Maria,” said Maria Martinez, a forty year old Filipino woman with long black hair tied back in a pony- tail and acne scarred skin.

“Hi, Maria,” Christine shook her hand, and then looked inquisitively across at the rather attractive, but young looking Asian woman sitting beside Maria.

“I am Mandy Chang,” said Mandy in answer to her look.

“Mandy.” Christine nodded to her in acknowledgement, instantly wishing that she was as thin as her.

“And last but not least,” said the third nurse with a grin on her freckled face, “Is me. I’m Susan Kennedy. No relation to the American clan.” She shook Christine’s hand.

Christine winced a little, and was relieved when the other let her hand go. She had quite a grip on her that matched her muscular stocky figure.

“Now,” continued Kate. “Do you need to be shown around the ward? I under-stand it’s your first shift here?”

“No. It’s my first night shift. I’ve been working day shift here for the last four weeks so I’m right.”

Kate smiled. “Good.”

“There wouldn’t be very much to do at night, would there?” asked Christine na-ively. “I mean they’d all be sleeping.”

“You hope they’ll all be sleeping. Night shift can be one of the busiest shifts. We have more patients per nurse, and there is less support staff on. Usually if anything is going to go wrong with a patient it will happen at night.”

“Why?”

“Because if a patient is deteriorating, it has been brewing all day, and it finally comes to a head at night. Then again sometimes we’re lucky and it’s quiet. Hopefully tonight will be quiet, although we do have a few postoperative patients.”

Christine nodded.

“Okay, here’s the routine for the night. I suggest you put your charts on one of the dressing trolleys. Makes it easier to cart them around and do your paperwork. Check their charts, make sure they’ve had all their medications and give any painkillers or se-dation as required. Do their vital signs and make them comfortable. If I come round and find your patient with the bed head up and the patient curled into a ball at the foot of the bed, or the foot of the bed extended on a short patient, I’ll kick your butt from here to the car park. That’s my pet hate. You lower the bed head and move the patient up.”

“Why don’t you like the end of the bed extended?”

“Because it usually means the nurse was too lazy to move the patient. As the patient slides down, they keep extending the end of the bed instead of moving the pa-tient up to the top of the bed. You’d be surprised how much difference making a patient comfortable does to your workload. Do it right to start with and the patient will sleep well and not be pressing the buzzer all night.”

Christine smiled. “That makes sense.”

“It does make sense, but so few nurses seem to practice commonsense when it comes to basic patient care. Make sure you tidy the bed areas, check the oxygen and suction equipment on the wall, and remove the chairs from the room. Not only are they a trip hazard at night, but they’re also a pain if there’s an emergency situation and we have to get to a patient fast. Saves time not having to move the excess furniture out of the room during an arrest.”

Christine’s eyes widened. “Does that happen often?”

Kate shrugged. “Comes in runs. We can go months and not have any and then we can have three in a week.”

“Oh, that’d be exciting.”

“Can be. So, clear on what you have to do?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“All right, you might as well get started. If you have any doubts don’t hesitate to ask the others or me. They’re all experienced nurses. You can learn a lot from them.”

Christine nodded.

“Oh, and don’t forget to measure the patients jugs and total up the fluid balance charts at midnight,” added Kate.

“Will do.”

” Kate left her to get on with her work, while she went to attend her own patients.

*****

The experienced nurses finished first and returned to the nurses’ station.

“Are we going to pull operation muffle on her?” asked Susan with a grin.

Kate shrugged. “I’m not sure. She’s pretty green. She’ll probably believe it. I don’t want her to get the wrong idea about us.”

Mandy chuckled. “It does not matter. It is in good fun. Besides, we will tell her the truth in the morning.”

“Okay, I guess so,” Kate agreed, returning Mandy’s smile. It was always amus-ing to see the grads expressions. First shock, then disbelief, then the dawning realization that they’d been had. Everyone usually had a good laugh about it afterwards.

They didn’t get a chance to talk to Christine for several hours, as all were busy with their midnight antibiotics. Kate helped Christine get hers ready and double-checked them. Christine was used to only having four patients during the daytime, not seven like at night. Still, she seemed to be coping all right, Kate noticed.

In her fifteen years of nursing she’d come across all manner of junior nurses. She could usually tell what type of nurse they would be fairly quickly. Some were com-pletely bewildered and out of their depth; others were naturals and nothing fazed them and some, well some were just plain stupid and it made her wonder how they ever graduated in the first place. There were the lazy ones, the workers, the slackers, and the conscientious, and there were some that only seemed to come here to socialize with the doctors.

She was pretty lucky on nightshift. Mandy, Maria, and Susan were great to work with. They were hardworking, competent and worked well together as a team. She could always rely on them. Christine had scored a six-week night shift rotation, which would give her a good chance to assess her competence.

Still, she appeared to know what she was doing, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Nothing worse than having an idiot on duty whom they had to watch every minute of the shift. Like the grad—Darlene—they had on six months ago. That girl was positively dangerous. If they hadn’t picked up her mistakes so quickly there could have been seri-ous consequences for the patients. She mixed up a patient’s eight hourly IV therapy with his Epidural infusion and ran his epidural at the IV rate. Luckily Mandy picked up the wrong rate almost immediately so the patient didn’t suffer any consequences, but he could have. It could have been fatal.

Kate recalled her feeling of relief at that. There were numerous other incidences as well, and despite reporting the girl, nothing seemed to be done about it. She was just glad when she was taken off night shift. Christine appeared more competent than that, thank goodness. It was a nightmare working with Darlene.

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning before things began to settle down a little.

“Whew!” said Christine...