Yup. I thought a resident had a piece of tape on his scrub pants. I yanked on it. He had a butterfly IV in his lower leg. So he could keep it open to inject drugs. He would steal narcotics from the nursing home he did staffing in. I had a nurse go batshit while taking care of an aortic balloon pump patient. She simply cracked up with no warning. I bounced my flight surgeon off his feet when he came into the ER with a beer and a 45. He had lost his wife suddenly and he was our only surgeon on call. He could not simply shut off his feelings. None of us can.
I had to. He was going to do surgery on a patient. We had called him in. He was at the range with a cooler of beer. He almost shot the range master. Because he was a full eagle, they couldn't run him off without the base commander's authority. He came into the hospital drunk and literally loaded for bear. He was retired after that. He was too grief stricken to effectively do his job.
I'm not sure how this convo became "staff stealing drugs". I think it might have went off the rails. From my perspective I was talking about the legally prescribed drugs staff are on to deal with mental breaks, and the other guy was talking about dealing with addicts doing crazy stuff to get admitted since the bar for getting admitted is higher now.
24
u/hellfirecat1 17d ago
Yup. I thought a resident had a piece of tape on his scrub pants. I yanked on it. He had a butterfly IV in his lower leg. So he could keep it open to inject drugs. He would steal narcotics from the nursing home he did staffing in. I had a nurse go batshit while taking care of an aortic balloon pump patient. She simply cracked up with no warning. I bounced my flight surgeon off his feet when he came into the ER with a beer and a 45. He had lost his wife suddenly and he was our only surgeon on call. He could not simply shut off his feelings. None of us can.