Many brave nurses "moonlight" for extra money, or just because they like variety. We contract out to other hospitals, often on a one shift basis. I say brave, because often you're walking into unknown territory where you don't know the lay of the land, the policies, who you're going to be working along side of and you don't know the doctors. If the hospital doesn't know you, you're gazed upon with a suspicious eye, just waiting for you to screw up. Your license and reputation teeter at the brink. If you have your shit together, everything works out, and if you "save-the-day", you're the freakin' hero of the moment, and they beg you to come back to play again.
Certainly in all the years of my practice, 97% of the physicians I encountered, were fantastic men and women. The other 3% were either incompetent, emotional sociopaths, megalomaniacs, and so on; they should have chosen other careers, but now we're stuck with them.
On this particular night of working elsewhere, a small hospital out in the boondocks, I recieved into my care a 42 year old woman, alcoholic, who was hemorrhaging from esophageal varices, and in her case, blood was coming out both ends. She was dying, unless she could be transported emergently to the county hospital immediately. I had to call in one of the most egotistical, "don't bother me" doctors, that I ever encountered. The climax of the night was where I joined the ambulance crew (they had no critical care nurse available), on a wild, hair-raising trip in the rain, on the freeway, with the patient gushing blood everywhere. The back of that ambulance looked like murder had taken place. Anyway, that's my tale........................


My Permission

Don't call me for this
Don't phone me for that,
For acute hemorrhagia
Don't call me stat,
Because sooner or later
I'll visit my clients,
A hands off approach
Is my method of science.

I studied long years
And went without sleep,
I made my mistakes
And buried them deep,
But now as a
Royal academy guy,
You must have my permission
Before you can die.

Fibril_late; 4/93