We put the unit on lockdown last night. That means the doors to the ICU are locked and a police officer gets posted outside the unit. I mean, all our security guards are off-duty cops anyway who wear vests that might be bulletproof and have very gun-looking things in holsters which I figure are probably tasers, but even I don't know for sure, so the visitors probably don't either. So on top of that we need a real cop with a gun.
This is all because we had one gangbanger who got shot up and sent to our unit around 3am, and thirty of his "cousins" and "sisters" came to visit along with his mom. Then a couple hours later, another guy was shot up, and was also being sent up to our unit, and the rumor was this was a retaliatory thing. So rather than have eight gang members in the room at once with the crashing patient and his irritated nurses, and then having the rival gang arriving to visit their guy, the whole unit got put on lockdown.
And I found out the hard way my badge doesn't scan to get me in the door.
All of this made me realize the young teen who got smashed by a hit-and-run driver should probably be in the pediatric ICU, where his mom will get to be around other parents with sick kids and not scary gangbangers.
I hope you advocated for this patient to be sent to PICU so that the family was more at ease!!!
ReplyDeleteI mentioned it, but it was a stressful time in the middle of the night, and I'm the new guy, and we would've had to call and wake up the neurosurgeon and ask if he minded walking to another building to the PICU from now on to see his patient...
ReplyDeleteI was curious, actually, about what resources and coping measures they offer to parents in the PICU, and if we could refer her to those.