Rite of Passage

Yesterday was the worst I have ever seen it in an emergency room. We had major emergency after major emergency come in. I was working in our peds department and we had two emergencies come in at once, much to the dismay of the other patients who had been waiting there for hours. I spent a good chunk of time doing damage control and letting parents vent and yell at me instead of hammering the poor pediatrician and nurses. We had this one little 14 mo old boy who wouldn't stop seizing despite ativan, dilantin, and keppra. Thankfully we have two large children's hospitals in the area who can take our big emergencies once we have the kids stabilized.

I ended up working the 3-11 shift yesterday. Around 10 pm, we had 42 patients in the waiting room with a six hour wait. I got called out of peds to see a patient in the main ER with a laceration. It turns out it was a delusional psych patient who had voices tell him to punch a glass door. Basically all the doc wanted me to do was just piece the skin back together loosely, because the patient had to go into the OR the next day. I was a little nervous based on his history and the way he was [not] tolerating getting the wound irrigated out, but two techs stayed in the room to help me. He actually tolerated me injecting the lidocaine fine, and would randomly conk out while I was working on him.

Then it happened.

I stuck myself with a needle while suturing. The moment it happened I groaned on the inside because I knew how much paperwork and blood work would be involved. Especially since the patient was incompetent and we would have to track down some sort of family member very late at night to give us permission to draw his blood. I finished up with the patient, went and saw the next patient (who was another laceration patient), then checked myself into the ER as a patient. Thankfully they took me back almost right away...the PA I was working with sat me on a chair in the med room, asked the nurse to draw my blood, and discharged me as soon as the paperwork was finished.

There's a really, really minisicule chance of being infected with anything, especially since it was a suturing needle and not a hollow needle that they use to inject medications. I just have to have blood work done periodically for the next year to make sure that I don't develop AIDs or Hep B or something. Most health care workers stick themselves at some point, so I am considering this a rite of passage!