"Just to take a picture"

Another typical crazy night.  Incompetent Charge Nurse (ICN).  Packed waiting room; 14 patient rooms full.  What else is new.  At least I have good docs with me & an excellent 2nd nurse to back me up.  I get report & jump right in.  One of my patients is a 3 year old requiring sedation to undergo imaging.  That's a first for me, how bouncy is this kid, geez!  By 11pm we're ready to sedate & as typical with children & sedation, the oral Chloral Hydrate doesn't even touch him, but instead makes him more hyper.  He's blabbering about eating chips & is trying to pull his cardiac leads off.  We add a mg of Versed & he instantly turns into a miniature, loveable drunk.  Previously reassured about the imaging that he's "just going to get a picture taken" he looks at his mom & slurs: "Ma!   Maa!!  Take a picture!" as a groggy smile spreads across his cute face.  Mom starts laughing hysterically, on the verge of tears from exhaustion.  Thank god for normal parents.  We head off to CT, the remaining Versed vial in my pocket.
We come back & the amount of people waiting to be seen appears to have doubled.  The down-side of doing sedation is that it eats up time, often a LOT of time, because you have to monitor the patient at the bedside, 1-on-1 until he's stable & breathing well on his own without any assistance or supplemental O2.  The ICN seems to have her own idea about sedation as she barks "I don't have any one to give you to monitor your patient.  How long does sedation take, anyway, an hour?!"  When I remind her that post-sedation monitoring alone can take up 30-45 minutes she rolls her eyes & blurts out "What do you think we do over here (in the Adult ER) when someone had sedation? We put them on the monitor & everyone watches them.  Why don't you have a tech watch your kid?"  My jaw hits the floor.  I love my techs, they're very helpful & great but they are simply not trained to monitor or rescue someone from procedural sedation.  So glad I'm leaving this job before I lose my license.