Reply #41

So they can get a handful from several ER's.

Been working as a nurse for 20 years...if people with a drug addiction are wanting drugs, they will do whatever it takes. My former and current co workers see this daily. Patients who clock watch for their next dose of narcotics..we had one patient who the doc told she could have morphine every 2 hours for chest pain (wasn't cardiac related, forget the actual diagnosis, it was a few years ago) so guess who pushed the call button literally every 1 hour and 58 minutes with "chest pain"? Around the clock. I could have set my watch by her.

Just recently we had someone who was trying to frame nurses by saying the nurses were not opening the vial of pain medicine in front of him and he didn't think that he was actually getting the pain medicine. Yet I go into give him the pain medicine and OPEN the vial in front of him (he had tried the stunt on me earlier) and he wouldn't take his eyes off the TV to watch me open it. Um, excuse me, I need you to LOOK at me while I OPEN this since last time you were not looking at me open it and you got upset that you didn't SEE me open it. What had changed his demeanor between the two times? He saw that I had brought a nurse co worker into the room with me and he knew that any shit he pulled would not just be between me and him. So he was trying to play cool and as if nothing was a big deal to him anymore. He even made the comment "oh, you didn't need to bring someone with you". Well, yeah, I did....when word spreads that you are trying to frame nurses over narcotics, we start to bring witnesses in the room with us. This is the same guy who wanted me to QUICKLY push the large amount of narcotic dose I as giving him. Quick push = a "buzz"/immediate high feeling. He was pissed because I was pushing it very slowly and taking away his thrill. He went as far to ask a co worker when I was leaving..sure enough, he delayed his next dose til he knew I was getting off shift. What he didn't realize is nurses share important info like his behavior during shift change report so everyone coming on to take care of him is well aware of what he is trying.

Bottom line, drug seekers know how to try and work the system. In this guy's case, he thought if he claimed a nurse didn't give him his narcotic dose, everyone would think he was right and just go ahead and give him a second dose of it..to hell if he fucked the nurse over under a cloud of suspect of taking a patient's narcotics.