Payday!

Another day, another dollar. Work is not always a bad thing! After spending some time talking to my hubby last night, I realized that I probably complain too much about the physicians in my industry. As we were chatting, he asked me if there were any good md's in my job. I told him there were lots of them, and I wouldn't be afraid to have most of them take care of me. I guess I find the challenges with physicians vs. the average RN in the day-to-day (or in this case, night-to-night) grind. Most of them work 24 hour shifts at the hospital, and understandably, get very disagreeable at 0300 in the a.m. I can understand that. The gripe is with docs who don't come see the patient or fight with the nurse about evaluating whether a baby is really in distress simply because it's not convenient for them. While most of our docs are good, there are a few (i.e. three out of about 20-some) that I would not have touch me with a ten foot pole due to bad attitude, bad bedside manner, and bad patient care. There's one doc in particular that most of the seminary wives see. He's really, really nice to his patients, but he manipulates their care in such a way that he always tries to come across as the hero of the delivery. I.e., last week he told a preterm 36-week mom that she was 6 cm's in the office (the nursES plural that checked her said she was only 2-3, which can be normal after more than one pregnancy), and therefore he induced her. At the delivery, he told the nurse NOT to call the neonatologist for the preterm delivery (they're usually there just in case the baby has a hard time adjusting to extrauterine life), and under the guise of promoting mom/baby bonding by putting the baby on mom's chest for attempted breastfeeding, the poor baby wasn't breathing well and ended up in the NICU. The doc might have great bedside manner and most of the affluent folk in the community love him, but I guess I would rather go to a doc who deals regularly with the Medical patients and who gives overall great care even if they don't do as much "doting" as the other doctors do.

Sarah had mentioned looking into getting a midwifery degree. The thought had crossed my mind, but unfortunately our hospital does not pay for any furthering of education. We would have to pay for grad school, and I'm actually making more now as an RN than some of our newer midwives make, which is really sad because they're SOOOOO good at what they do. I love our midwives. We had a little mom the other day that had her first baby, weighed only 105 pounds at the end of the pregnancy (she was only 80 pounds to begin with), and because she was so tiny, she pushed for 3 hours. The midwife was with me for about 3/4 of the pushing time, and while other providers probably would have made an episiotomy to get the baby out (in this case, the baby's heart rate was OK so she didn't need to cut mom anyway), she just let the baby labor down and eventually the mom delivered without any vacuum assists and only a minor tear. It's great when providers do things for the sake of the patient instead of for the sake of time and/or convenience.

Favorite thing of the day: soft bathrobe. Needs to be washed, but hey. Soft things are always nice to have around before going to sleep. No beer today; I made rice with cumin/corriander and black beans a while ago. It seems we're low on groceries; I guess that'll be the task for tomorrow.