Naïveté

It's 0300 and the ER was starting to wind down from crazy to steady. We had a new young nurse, Suzy Sunshine, RN, with us who was orienting to the night shift in our busy downtown ER. One of our patients was a woman of the night who was assaulted and was being discharged. She was wearing a tube top, a skirt that barely qualified for the job of a belt, and platform heels. After being told by the physician that she was being released, she was eager to leave. Suzy told her it would be just a moment while she got her discharge papers and the woman stated loudly "Y'all need to hurry it up. I gotta get back out there and make some money!" Suzy got her discharge ready and then returned to the nurses' station and said "Where in the world does she work? It's 3 in the morning? There's nothing open around here right now." Laughter in the department ensued. Poor Suzy- we finally quit laughing long enough to explain what the woman did for a living :)  I'm still chuckling about this... 

Of course, I can't say much. I remember the first time I discovered a frequent flyer patient was just using me to obtain pain meds. Then I had a patient that pulled the patient sticker off her prescription for narcotics and told us all to f* off she had money to make- by selling her newly written script.  You lose a little bit of that eager-to-please spirit.