Like everyone else, due to budget cuts we've been a lot stingier with staffing lately which means we're putting nurses and scrub techs on standby a lot lately. I enjoyed it by being put on Friday night, which was great since I hadn't gotten but about 2 hours of sleep overnight with Ben and didn't get to catch a nap during the day either. So when they called and offered it to me I didn't miss a beat.

Last night was a good night. We were again furloughed down to minimum staffing (4 RNs) but it was fine. We only had one pretermer on Mag, a spontaneous laborer, a R/O SROM and a R/O Flu. The last one was found to be positive for Flu A pretty quick after our shift started so I stayed the hell away from her room since Ben's surgery is this week. Even though I had the flu shot I still didn't want to take any chances. We had a nurse orienting last night and her preceptor had called in sick so I was in charge of her as well as the unit. We took the labor patient for the experience and it worked out wonderfully!

Since I took the charge position last July I'm now in charge EVERY time I go to work. Most of the time I like it because my personality meshes well with wanting to call the shots, decision making and critical thinking skills. I think I do a good job, and many nurses tell me they like working when I'm in charge because I'm confident, fair and don't hesitate to stand up to the docs or the nurses if need be. The main drawback to this job assignment is that I rarely "get" laborers anymore because in an ideal world I'd never take a patient assignment when I was "stuck" in a patient room for longer than 30 minutes at a time, in order to know what else is going on in the unit. So, unless its a crazy night where we all have labor patients, I tend to take the pretermers, or other lower acuity patients. I miss the laborers sometimes. I still get to "help" with them, by relieving someone so they can grab a break, or still be in the delivery since we send in another RN to receive the baby, but it's not the same.

Last night our patient was in spontaneous early labor, a multip. She was married and spouse was very nice and very supportive. She didn't want anything for pain control and was in total control, most of the time. I love taking care of these patients. It was fun teaching the new RN how to marry our two needs, her need to be free to move and our need to monitor baby. We got her up to walk the halls with periodic returns to the room for monitoring until she got into transition and then we put her on telemetry monitors in the room and used the straddle chair, jacuzzi, etc. We advocated for the patient when she wanted to be free of the IV (her provider was a doc rather than a midwive, which would have been more in line with her wants but a little late for that!) and when she wanted to wait for SROM rather than be ruptured artificially. She had her delivery, the way she wanted it and we were lucky enough to be invited along. It was a surprise what they were having and when Dad announced it they burst into tears because the little girl made their family two boys and now two girls which their other daughter had been praying for fervently all pregnancy!

What a great night! I'm back again tomorrow night and then off for Ben's hernia repair this week so I'm off until Sunday when hopefully they'll put me on standby again because I wanted to take the night off but couldn't find coverage.