Lost and Found (but mainly lost).
By impactEDnurse • Mar 7th, 2010 • Category: reflective practice.People sure do secrete a lot of valuable stuff around on their personages. And when they come into the emergency department, all that stuff must be dealt with.
For example:
- Wallets. In males, these can often resemble small leather pillows stuffed with old receipts and business cards and a whole lot of crap that time and butt pressure eventually melts into a conglomerated, amorphous gob.
- Large amounts of cash. Or a very large amount of small cash (which is worse).
- Jewellery, including watches, necklaces, bracelets, penis studs, labia rings, toe rings, ankle chains.
- IPods, iPhones, Blackberrys.
I remember looking after an Asian gentleman who arrived unconscious after collapsing at the Casino.
Checking through his pants we came across $15,000 dollars rolled up in an elastic band1
Generally all this sort of stuff is a real pain.
Any items of value must be individually documented in a property ledger, counter signed in triplicate by two nurses and stored in separate tamper proof envelopes.
And you have to be very careful what you write, so as not to imply an intrinsic value that may wrongfully be claimed should such an item get lost.
For example, we cant write ‘a gold Rolex watch’, but instead must come up an altogether more obtuse description such as ‘a yellow coloured, metal watch with the letters Rolex on the face.
Lost cause:
Not that I am denying that people have every right to expect their property to be safe and secure whilst they are in hospital.
They do, and it should be2.
But why must they have so much of it?
Dont they realize that every day they are but a hairs breadth of circumstance away form staring into the cold glare of one of our surgical lights as nurses slice through their Pierre Cardin shirts, and machete down their designer skirts?
Are people so selfish that they do not see we simply do not have the resources to tie up 2 consultants and 4 nurses shimmying around the resuscitation room on their hands and knees looking for the silver ball of their $ 200.00 labial barbel that I dropped whilst trying to figure out how the heck exactly you get one of these things undone?
C’mon people. Not so much stuff!
To be serious, we do the very best we can to keep the patients goods and shackles from getting lost. We really do.
But its a crazy place, and our priorities are often caught up in not losing souls rather than not losing possessions.
Lost salvation:
Of course, often times value is far deeper than simple monetary worth.
My own worst experience with patient valuables is when I was caring for a nun, and lost her wooden crucifix. A gift that was personally given to her by the Pope.
It was a simple cross made from two irregular pieces of polished wood with a hole drilled through, hung on leather cord. I can remember folding it amongst her clothes and placing them on a chair.
And that was the last we ever saw of it.
I turned the department upside-down. I checked all the bins, all the sharps bins, all the linen skips.
I’m certain God was not amused.
The nun however was totally forgiving, which made it even worse. I could have dealt with the situation a whole lot better if she had simply kneed me in the groin before finishing me off with some sort of secret nun-jitsu move.
Lost Property:
Beside our Triage area we have a large lost property cupboard where we store all sorts of found objects; unidentified stuff that gets left behind when patients leave the department. Usually it is full of tatty bras and odd socks.
Sometimes a set of dirty teeth will cast a lonely grin from their unclaimed denture cup.
Once we even had a complete leg prosthesis that sat on top of the cupboard for some months3, before finally being claimed.
- I remember well that he also had socks with holes in them. This is a common occurrence I have noticed, where people of wealth or power often wear old grotty underwear and hole-ridden socks. More psycho-social research is needed in this area. [↩]
- I would be the first one jumping up and down if I woke up from a coma without my iPhone. Noooooooo!! [↩]
- now you think someone might just miss something like a leg prosthesis…
“I dunno Mavis, I just don’t seem to be getting around as well since I came home from hospital last month…..” [↩]
impactEDnurse is also known as Ian Miller, a nurse with over 26 years experience working in a busy emergency department in, Australia. This site in no way reflects the opinions of that hospital.
All stories (although based on actual experiences) have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
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Regarding footnote # 1, one of my Scottish Mother’s jems of advice that always makes me laugh:
No matter what you’re wearing on the outside, always remember to wear clean underwear in good condition, you just never know when you will be hit by a bus, you dont want the doctors and nurses to be talking about the state of your underwear.
Said with a very thick accent. Maybe she is right …
I’m not so sure, S. If I get hit by a bus, I reckon there’s a fair to middling chance I’m going to shit my pants, anyway.
My mother used to say the same thing, and she’s Indian. Maybe it’s something they teach at the Global Mommy School.
The hospital back home has “property managers”, popularly known as “Socks”, because that’s what they smell of after their shifts. They try to find their lost sanity in the prop room during shift handover.
Sometimes they do.
While I was working in the ED of the local big hospital, I was not surprised (usually) by what all people had with them. Lots of these people were brought here under sudden circumstances on their way home from work or shopping or whatever, and so they had lots of stuff. I get it.
However, since starting ward work, I am astounded by what people, coming in for elective procedures, bring in with them. One man recently decided that he really needed his passports, a selection of international currency, a small hook and spring scale (that he uses to weigh car parts when he is shopping overseas), two digital still cameras, a video camera, an assortment of small electronic gadgets, three books, a laptop, and two bags full of yet more bits and pieces. Razor? No. Toothbrush? No. Change of clothes? No. But he would be able to trade in car paraphernalia if he were suddenly teleported to Jaipur or Arizona.
And then he got upset at myself and the other nurse on duty (not a native English speaker, to put it mildly, thereby adding to the aggravation for all concerned) in that area because we wouldn’t let him sleep because we had to spend an HOUR cataloguing all his bits and bobs…”…and this? What’s this called?”. “Well, that’s a dealybobber that makes this thingamajig run better…why are you asking me so may questions about my stuff? I’ll look after it!”. “Well, sir, the theatre staff frown on patients bringing in all their stuff, so we have to log it…”. “Just lock it away!”. “Yes sir. Right after we log it all.”.
This is why doing nursing admissions of patients to the ward is my least favourite part of nursing.
Don’t even start me off on drug abusers who scream the place down (back when I was in ED) saying that someone stole their suitcase and groceries that they came in with last night after the “OD’d” on Caltrate and Nicabate. Oooooooggg….. Eighteen phone calls later – “Your stuff is at the backpacker’s hostel that you’re staying at.” “Oh, right…gee, you’d think I’d have remembered that…”.
Yep.
I used to regularly see a intoxicated derelict in ED who would have several thousand dollars in his pockets
Had one very angry rude woman repeatedly phone when I was on triage demanding that myself / staff search for her father’s watch which was lost whilst he was in ED. I looked and looked and looked and could not find the watch.
I ended up putting her through to management as she was lodging a complaint that staff were thieves and had stolen the watch.
She phoned back later in the evening to say her father’s watch had been found at home – where it has been the whole time !! (he had never had it on him whilst in the ED).