I disobeyed an order. Probably going to lose my rank after just being promoted. I still say I did the right thing. Just a rant.
Posted on
I can not disclose some things here because of HIPPA laws but I just wanted to throw this out there and see what other people think.
As a member of the Army National Guard, I was activated for COVID-19 relief efforts. My post is at a hospital. My only job at the hospital is make sure everyone that comes through the EMT/ambulance entrance is wearing a mask, uses hand sanitizer, and when applicable take their temperature.
We were given very specific instructions to NOT deal with patients. Well today I broke that rule. One of the head nurses a few weeks ago said that I can watch them work when people go into the various trauma/resuscitation rooms. I like to learn and watching these doctors and nurses work has been enlightening. Well here comes the part where I disobeyed an order.
A patient came in and for whatever reason there were not a lot of nurses available for this patient. he was in the resuscitation room. The doc asked the nurse that was there to do something and she said, "There's only one me doc" as she tried to get 100 things done at once. That's when I said it
"I wish there was something I could do."
You see, I have been watching patients go into this room for weeks and I feel SO HELPLESS watching from the outside. Well, when I said that, the nurse looked up and said, "CAN YOU?!" not in a condescending way, but in a hopeful way. They needed every hand they could get. I have some medical experience, I'm not a medic but I have some training. There was a certain task being done by an EMT that I knew how to do that is very repetitive and requires some physical effort and endurance. I said, "I can do that if it can free up another set of more skilled hands." next thing I knew I had my hands on the patient performing this task. big no no.
I will not describe any treatments or the outcome of the patient but the head nurse in the room wanted my chain of commands info to tell them how thankful they were that I was there and that I was willing to help without hesitation. Turns out the doc and the nurse are both ex Army. I gave them the info and it wasn't until later when I realized that I f-ed up. I had disobeyed a direct order to not touch patients.
By touching that patient I risked exposure to not only myself but the entire unit. While I feel like I did the right thing at the time, I understand that my actions have consequences. I just picked up my 5, and I am already about to lose it because I didn't use sound judgement.
I kind of hope this gets lost in the depths of Reddit but I have so much anxiety about my inevitable punishment I needed to talk about it.
[link] [comments]
Subscribe to our newsletter
Promotions, new products and sales. Directly to your inbox.