So... I recently started on night shift at the hospital; I work in an cardiovascular surgery intensive care unit. Basically we get patients straight from the OR post CABG and valve repair or replacement. There I am 01:40, I had just gotten back from lunch "dinner" whatever.... I checked on both my patients and sat at the desk to chart on them. The alarm sound had been going off throughout the night for faulty equipment, but just then the alarm started going off again in one of my rooms. I hesitated for 5 seconds and said to myself, I'm going to get up and it's going to stop, I'm going to walk over to the room and everything will be dandy... right!!! ... WRONG.. the alarm didn't stop and when I got to the room there was my patient in a full blown V-Tack, I had never seen it except in my EKG book and ACLS exams... so I immediately pulled the code blue button and lowered the head of the bed to start compressions. 3 seconds later, I full crew of nurses were in my room, shocking the patient, pushing Epinephrine, drawing labs and recording everything that was happening. I thought.. this is freaking amazing!! I couldn't believe how everything from ACLS class came back to me and I wasn't even thinking as I was resuscitating the patient along side my nurse colleagues. Basically, after compressions, 2 shocks, 2 epis and 1 dose of 0.5 of atropine the patient was fine in a normal sinus rhythm. That was quite an experience for me.
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