Critical Care Coffee

I'm about to come off of orientation in MICU. So it was really important this last week for me to take advantage of every learning opportunity. I was with a different preceptor every night who all insisted that I carry a full patient load for my remaining nights on orientation. Luckily I was blessed enough that the patients I cared for the first night remained in the ICU for the next two nights as well.

In my humble opinion this just makes for a better evening. You learn the patient's history right off the bat, familiarize yourself with their doctors and their current medical condition which makes it easier to care for these same patients on consecutive nights. On my third night I came in and was pleasantly surprised to find that neither of my patients had been transferred to the floor. The night started smoothly and continued as such.

Around 4 AM the x-ray technicians made their rounds getting the usual morning chest x-rays. Of course I wasn't surprised when they stopped in my second room to get x-rays on my one patient who had just recently, miraculously survived a rather serious motorcycle accident. When the technician exited the room she walked over to me and informed me that the patient was asking for some coffee. I then proceeded to ask him how he takes his coffee because it always seems that I bring too much creamer, or too little sugar, or decaf instead of regular and it would just same me some extra steps to get it right the first time.

I walked in the room, the patient sitting up in bed watching TV, and asked him, " How do you take your coffee?" to which he replied with the silliest of smirks on his face, "Hot, blonde, and sweet." Luckily for me the lights were off where he couldn't see my face turn about 10 shades of crimson. Despite my embarrassment I repeated the question to which he responded more appropriately this time.

We had a good laugh about that in MICU that morning. It's just too bad that I'm not a coffee person myself!