The Saga of the hospital bed

One of the simple tasks I do in the ER is transfer patients who are admitted into the hospital up to either the Med/Surg floor or the ICU floor. I load up the patient belongings onto the bed along with the patient and wheel the patient/bed up to the floor. Once in their new room, I slide the ER bed next to the floor bed to shift the patient to the bigger and better floor bed. I then chat with the floor nurse for a few minutes to make sure she is up to date on the patient before taking the ER bed back down to the ER. It is a simple process really....

However, an incident occurred two weeks ago...

It was like any other Med/Surg admit patient.

I got the patient belongings together, charting, disconnected tubing, got oxygen hooked up to the bed....ready to go.

Steered the bed/patient onto the elevator, up to the 4th floor, moved the bed into the room, shimmied it next to the floor bed, transferred patient.

Gave info to floor nurse....

And i walked out of the room and took...the STAIRS.

Didn't have another thought about the transfer until an hour later I hear a nurse say, "Hey, where's our ER bed?" Oh no! I instantly realized what I had done.

"I forgot the bed upstairs!" I confessed.

Laughter erupts in the ER. So an ER tech went up to the floor and asked where our bed had gone. The floor nurse says, "What bed?" "You know, our ER bed....it was left up here."

The floor nurse says, "Oh, you mean the gurney?" "Yeah, stretcher, gurney, bed....whatever."

Haha laughter deferred from me to the floor nurse until.....

A week later, I did the same thing!! I transferred the pt to the floor bed and walked straight out of the room without the bed. Awesome! And so.....I was given two addenda to my badge:).