Drama at work

My patients seem to have conspired and decided that I needed some excitement at work. Was assessing a patient with lung infection the other day when I realised that his resting oxygen saturation was only 46% (norm: 98-100%) and he was drowning in his secretions! I did a quick check of his pulse and blood pressure to make sure he has not collapsed, got a student nurse to inform the medical staff and went on to perform chest physiotherapy on him. After half an hour of aggressive chest physio and suctioning [to remove the secretions] with the help of the medical officer, we finally managed to bring his oxygen level up to 90%.

On a separate day, I had just stepped into the intensive care unit when I heard the alarms coming from one of the cubicles. Went to check and was horrified to discover that the patient had yanked out the tubing connecting his trachy to the ventilator. There had been 2 new admissions that morning so the nurses were busy attending to them and weren't able to respond to the alarms as quickly as they normally would. In the next few minutes, I was actually engaged in a tug-of-war with the patient - he simply refused to let me hook it back on! I was worried sick that he might end up pulling out his trachy which would have resulted in a medical emergency! Thank goodness he calmed down after a while and allowed me to reconnect the tube. *phew!*

Seriously...I can do without all these drama at work!