strike.

I was really REALLY gonna try to make this a happy-go-lucky post. I really was. You gotta believe me.

For example, I was going tell the world that I was – for the first time, in a LONG time – a straight-A student. That nursing school seemed to agree with me. But then this week hit, and I have killed myself to study my butt off, and STILL got two B’s (which I’m perfectly fine with). So that “happy” announcement kinda fell through. But that wasn’t really that bad.

What was bad was that last Thursday, the California nurses’ union went on strike to ask hospital administrators to reconsider nurse-to-patient ratios in their respective departments and hire more nurses. Now, while I’m all for decreasing the nurse-to-patient ratios (and thereby making sure quality of care isn’t compromised), I don’t know enough about the politics of the debate to form my own opinion regarding the situation. But because of the strike, traveling nurses (or, as resident nurses like to call them, “scabs”) were brought in to replace those nurses for the duration of the strike.

And then Saturday came around, and regardless of what everybody thinks, things took a turn for the worse.

A cancer patient at Alta Bates Summit Hospital in Oakland – the exact SAME hospital that houses Samuel Merritt University, a hospital I see almost EVERY DAY – suddenly passed away on Saturday, when a traveling nurse accidentally placed a nutritional supplement into the patient’s IV instead of the feeding tube.

It was only two days prior that hospital administrators said that this whole debate over nurse-to-patient ratios wasn’t a medical issue, but an economic one.

It was only two days prior that this patient was receiving the care she needed to, hopefully one day, recover from this debilitating disease. Little. By. Little.

It was only two days prior that this 23-year-old traveling nurse was on her way to California for another couple day’s work. Same old, same old.

And then somebody suffered for it.

My Pathophysiology professor actually teared up in class. He almost cried. 23 years old, and this nurse’s career is potentially OVER.

I’m 23.

A sobering thought, isn’t it?

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