You Can't Please Everybody

Just got back from a long eight-hour shift full of truly sick patients.  It was one of those nights that's rough for everybody - we were short-staffed, results were slow, hallways were packed, we had no available beds and no transporters to bring patients anywhere.  For half the shift I covered two teams and moved nonstop from one patient to the next, dealing with the demented, dying, psychotic, manipulative and abusive people that tend to accumulate on nights like these.  

And unfortunately, on nights like these people wait.  There comes a point when there's simply nothing more that can be done for a patient in the ER, and until a floor bed is available they're stuck with us.  It's not because we're lazy or we don't care; we had techs and nurses wheeling people up all night, I tried my best to do whatever I could - grab an extra blanket or pillow or food tray - for everyone who was forced to wait for hours.  

So at the end of my shift, after half and hour of standing at the bedside and holding a neb treatment up to the face of a demented and severely wheezing old woman who had fought with us all night and would not tolerate a mask, I passed by my patient who had been waiting all afternoon and evening for a bed and who I had told earlier that I would try to find a phone for him to call his daughter.  

As I walked past him to go punch out, having forgotten in the commotion to get him the phone, he looked at me with this disgusted leer and said, "You know, you people are all the same.  You all promise you're going to help someone, and you never do."  And I realized that sometimes you just can't win.