Jessica Wheeler works the night shift as an oncology nurse at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in northeastern Pennsylvania\u2013but her patients are usually wide awake. \u201cWhen they have a new cancer diagnosis or they\u2019re going to have a biopsy in the morning, they don\u2019t sleep,\u201d says the 25-year-old Wheeler (which is not her real name). \u201cThey\u2019re scared.\u201d Other patients are in their final hours of life, surrounded by grieving family. What she wants is to be there to comfort them, to talk them through those difficult hours, to hold their hands and attend to their pain. But, mostly, she can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
According to hospital policy, night nurses on her floor should care for no more than six and a half patients, but they typically have ten. When things go bad with one or two, the floor quickly tips into chaos.<\/p>\n
Wheeler recalls one night when she had a patient who couldn\u2019t breathe and several others under her care. \u201cI called the supervisor to ask for anybody\u2013a nursing assistant, anybody! And I didn\u2019t get it, and my patient ended up coding.\u201d Another night, Wheeler had a post-op patient who required constant attention; the patient was confused and sick, and she soon escaped her restraints and pulled out her drains, spraying fecal matter all over the wall. Early the next morning, her heartbeat became irregular just as another patient was dying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose nights are scary,\u201d Wheeler says. \u201cI think I\u2019ve seen everybody on our floor cry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another young nurse describes a shift when she had only been on the job a few months and was saddled with ten patients, including one whose incision was leaking badly, requiring her to administer blood all night long. \u201cI was drowning,\u201d the nurse says. She called for help multiple times, but it never came. At the 7 am shift change, she confused two patients\u2019 blood-sugar numbers and medicated the wrong one.<\/p>\n