(My enjoyment of coffee is well documented here, so no need to retrace steps).
We were pretty busy for the first hour, so then I went to get my first cup. Coffee maker is empty. Big mess around same. Cleaned up the mess, started coffee.
Get crushed with sick patients, work like crazy to keep the ill and injured as well as possible.
2 hours later, a break; coffee maker is empty. Start another pot.
An hour and a half later, some re-evals are done, and there’s two minutes of slack time, and time for coffee. 1/2 pot available, but no cups.
Aargh.
Another hour later, finally there’s a break, and a cup, and coffee! Huzzah!
Home two hours later. One cup.
Crazy shift!
I find that I frequently find the time to get a cup of coffee (after tracking down cups, stirring devices, non-expired creamer and sweetener) only to have no time to actually DRINK the coffee. It just sits around and gets cold and then I’m back to square one. Such a disappointment!
I gave up drinking coffee at work. When you first pour it, it’s too hot to drink. I don’t have time to just sit in the lounge and hang out, we aren’t supposed to bring coffee into the nurse’s station where I could get some work done while blowing/sipping/waiting for it to reach the right temperature, and I would never bring a cup into the patients’ rooms. And there is no place else to set it down.
Thanks, JCAHO! :(
Thanks Doc! While reading this I remembered that I brewed up a pot of ‘good’ coffee and hadn’t gotten a cup for myself yet.
Good thing its not a Navy Hospital GD.. the place would shut down completely on one cup 6 hours into the shift…
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve started a pot of coffee only to get too busy to enjoy a cup before it gets cold. Pretty much a guaranteed thing.
I want one of those stainless steel cups that keeps your coffee really hot so I don’t have to microwave it quite so often.
Oh, and we have a sign on the nurses station desk that says “No food or drink in clinical areas”
We call it our place mat.