M E T

Stands for Medical Emergency Team. Yesterday we had a MET call to the rehab ward, where a woman had developed sudden abdominal pain accompanied by tachycardia, work of breathing and decreasing O² Sats (So her pulse rate was fast, her breathing rapid and laboured and her Oxygen levels in her bloodstream were going down). She was feeling crook, no doubt about it. We did an ECG which showed a tachy rate but nothing else overtly sinister (like ischaemic changes) and I took her Blood Pressure on both arms to find a marked difference (With sudden onset of abdominal pain and the other symptoms one might start thinking a large abdominal bleed, like an Aortic aneurysm dissection) - it turns out this patient had had major vascular problems in one of her arms however, which always caused difficulties in ascertaining accurate BP and even in finding a pulse. Ah well...despite this relevant history she still might have been having a big bleed. The poor lady was conscious throughout, with a large number of senior medical and nursing staff buzzing around her bed and was of course quite frightened. We tried to reassure her as best we could.
We moved her to ED where she was eventually intubated, had a femoral CVC line put in and sent her to a larger hospital attached to all kinds of devices. That took up most of the morning shift.
I wonder how she is going. I feel for the families that wait outside the resuscitation rooms whilst some of the more complex procedures are going on, although our staff are very good at communicating with them and letting them know what is happening to their loved ones in terms they can understand.
This was a serious morning, as opposed to the other night when I cared for a woman who was not seriously ill, but extremely drunk who kept telling me how "gorgeous I was darling" ~ as I commented to one of the other nurses, it's seems to be only the inebriated, demented or blind patients that give me compliments like that!