IchTrinkeJager

I haven't actually seen any storm victims in my unit yet. If there are any that came to the hospital, they were probably treated for minor injuries or such since we only take critically ill patients in ICU. If I had to guess, right now the main people that are going to be coming to the hospital (in quantity) are going to be chronicly ill patients that are dependent on ventilators and other mechanical devices that have lost power wherever they are.

Couldn't tell you any awesome hero stories about the storm right now. The hospital is a very divided, but uniform structure. Emergency Department nurses would know everything that's going on outside of the hospital at the moment. Whereas me as an ICU nurse, I only know about the critically ill patients, which not many of the patient that are walking in right now are.

edit we had a few diabetic patients run out of insulin and they went into DKA come in. A few vented patients also were received.

I think some nurses are more altruistic than others. Obviously there are good nurses and bad nurses, same with any other job. Good engineers, bad engineers. Good presidents, bad presidents. But to be a nurse, you have to have at least a little bit of compassion and altruism to do this job.

I definitely feel your friends on being underappreciated sometimes. Some people just don't understand what we do. Patients, family members, patient's visitors, and even the doctors--some of them just have no idea how stressful, demanding, and outright nasty our work can be.

I do what I do for many different reason. Some reasons are realistic, like for example. Job security and decent pay. And then I also do take pride in what nursing is and does for the people and community, which is another reason why I do what I do.

1. More like it's mandatory unless if you just absolutely can't get to the hospital

2. we've been sleeping wherever we can find space, except for patient's rooms obviously and away from clinical areas. We are also taking turns showering in empty patients' rooms. and I'm currently staying on my night shift schedule. They won't swap us shifts, that's just cruel.

3. The hurricane has made a large impact on our supplies right now. We're all using our supplies very very sparingly because the delivery guys obviously can't make their shipments. Scheduled surgeries are also being cancelled. Some of the doctors cannot come in and so the ones already here are being forced to work longer hours, which as you know may affect medical care in negative ways.

I'm in ICU right now. It is my "homebase." If needed though, I could be moved to work in an intermediate care unit, which is a step down from ICU. But that's only if they were short staffed and needed one of us to float there. Doesn't seem to be much craziness going on in the ED at the moment. Then again, there are a handful of other hospitals very close in vicinity to my hospital, so more people might be going to those hospitals rather than coming to mine.

I live alone in Houston and am in pretty good condition at the moment, other than the fact that I didn't bring anything (change of clothes, food, toiletries), but the hospital is accommodating us, the employees, fairly well so far. The hospitals are still pretty safe to be in.

absolutely. The kitchen is the most important unit of the hospital. Without food we would all die.