What a day!

I knew when I left work tomorrow that today could be hellish. The person who was supposed to work all day long today, worked the night shift, so I was left alone.

I was supposed to work from 7am to 2pm. I was alone in the ward. I was not supposed to be, but no one was found to take the shift. Sooo... on top of that I noticed one of our residents not being his usual self. He doesn't talk, but I noticed he was not well.

I called the general assessment of the need for treatment to get instructions. Twice. He started to scream of pain (my assessment) before I called the second time. We got permission to give him pain medicine, and luckily that helped.

Residents were coming and going all day long. It's always a huge "chore" to get them ready to leave when the taxi arrives. Both ways. I did the 5 meals on everyone. Washed laundry and wiped buttocks.



At 2pm I got a person to help that took the gig. She called the bosses substitute (of course the boss was away) and told her that she's gonna walk if she needs to be alone. So I stayed for an extra 6 hours. Again. Did the same last week.



I am beyond exhausted and I need to be back tomorrow morning at 7 am.



If an inspector would have walked in on our ward today, it would have not been okay that the whole ward is on someone who has no training and has been on the job less than 3 weeks.



I got through and everyone was fed, clean and alive when I left.



I have to admit that there were times when I almost started to cry. Partly from exhaustion, partly from being left alone and partly because I don't always know everything I feel I need to know.



I will try to save my cries for tomorrow afternoon when I get off from work. I feel that if I start now, it will not end. I don't think that it was okay to leave me handle everything alone. There was work for 2 people, and in addition I had one who was sick and needed to be observed all the time.



I do feel I did F*N good job today. I feel I did more that could be expected from me. And I am interested to see if the boss lady will talk about this with me at all...