Don't you hate it when your patient is at deaths door and the heart surgeon is blaming you over the phone?

8 hr post cabg, chest tubes stopped putting out blood. Swan, Art line, cvp, CO all pointed to tamponade, blood sugar was going out of control , even with an insulin gtt.

I called the surgeon at 2am. I gave him my assessment and numbers, his reply was, "You are killing my patient!! It is a blood sugar problem and if you do not get it under control.Whe patient will die. Once again I attempted to explain to him. He started cussing and telling me how all nurses are so stupid. I HUNG UP ON HIM.

I then called him back and asked if he was ready to discuss his patient. He cursed at me and hung up on me.

10 min later he arrived at the unit. I had repeatedly attempted to contact he and he would not answer his call.

He then proceeded to tell me in front of patients and staff how I was going to kill his patients if I did not get the blood sugar under control. Well the patient was in so much distress that I could not get the GD BS under control. Doing blood sugars q10 min supplementing the gtt with IVP insulin.

Well he had called the surgical teem in and did not even tell me. I truly thought we would open the chest in the room. I had the chest opening cart at the bed side.

Well he brought the patinet back from surgery just befor the end of my shift. The anesthesia doc. told me, behind the surgons back, that the patient was full of large clots pressing on the heart and lungs. He congradulated me on my call.

The heart surgeon sat down next to me and said, "There was a whole in the left atrium. I don't know how that got there." All I wanted to say was, "You were the only one in there with a knife ass whole."