Everybody Has a Story Part 7

Last week I worked on the ward. We had to do a patient swap with another hospital and the new patient we got was a 40-something-old man that just had surgery on his ankle. Not a huge surgery but still pretty painful. The thing about getting patients from other hospitals is that we can't do anything until one of the docs at our hospital comes and sees the patient and writes orders. The doc we were waiting for was stuck in emerg so she was a little late seeing the patient. Normally, this isn't a big deal except the guy needed some pain medication. He was pretty pissed that he couldn't get anything especially since at the other hospital he was well pain-controlled. After a little over an hour I decided, "screw this, I'm going to give him the same pain-killers he was getting at the other hospital." even though he wasn't even my patient. This is kinda frowned on cuz I'm giving medication without a doctor's order, but I kinda knew the doc we were waiting for and I was pretty sure she would just order the same thing anyway. So I gave it to him and then left him alone to cool off and to let the medication kick in. A couple hours later I went in to see him and he was feeling much better and was in a better mood. He apologized for losing his temper and thanked me for helping him out. It turned out to be a good shift for me.