Saturday, November 24, 2007

Who's to blame?

Brody was kind of smelly this morning so I asked the nurse when Brody's last bath or trach care was. She looked at me strange and told me that she understood that I was the one who has been doing trach care- not the nurses. I said "I can't do it alone and the last one I helped out with was Tuesday morning!! He hasn't had trach care since?!!" ICU policy is to do trach care 2x/day and baths 1x/day. Turns out that since his arrival Mon, he has only had the full trach care Tues and a partial trach care on Thurs. I did give the ok to yesterday's nurse to skip it and leave it for PM shift because Brody was so agitated, but night shift didn't do it. And nobody is really sure when his last bath was. Probably just the bath I gave him on Thursday. I was not happy! The respiratory therapist came in while I and the nurse were doing an all-out trach change and said "Mom is so good at that. We should hire her on to do all the trach cares in the unit." I shot back "Well, somebody has to do it!" I feel kind of bad because I don't think today's staff is to blame. Nor yesterdays nurse. Its mostly the night shift and some poor communication. But I'm angry all the same because now he has a 2nd infection that may have been avoided....

1 comment:

Jami said...

Amie,
So apparently I need to fight to take care of Brody more...there has never been a night that I have been his nurse and he has not gotten scrubbed down. He doesn't always like it, but he sleeps so well afterwards! I'm sorry that this aspect of his care fell to the wayside. Our communication skills need to be improved, that's for sure...
Thinking of you and hoping you get to go home soon!
Jami