Let's play I Remember When.....

What do I remember?

Regarding those enemata, I can't even remember how many I did. First on evening shift, the poor lambs got their MgCitrate and clear liquids. At bedtime, they got the first enema. A second was given after a dulcolax suppository starting at 5 am. Clear meant clear. The color of tea was permitted, if clear.

Running 12 lead rhythm strips every 2 hours on Intermediate Care

Hospital or facility sponsored holiday parties at nice hotels.

Recognition pins.

Unit Dose Pharmacy system.

Retirement parties.

I can remember when hospitals across the USA (up until the late '70's) would use a blind man or woman in the radiology unit to develop films. It was not uncommon to see the blind person with a badge ID walking along with their seeing-eye dog, also with a name badge, in the hospital or in the cafeteria.
It provided jobs for them....until the advent of digital imaging.

I remember a time of no gloves...finger cots instead and not for everything either. I remember when rooms did not have bathrooms and we used commodes if they couldn't get down the hall. And taping body parts, i.e. butt cheeks to bedrails and using heat lamps for wound healing. And I got pretty good at cupping and postural drainage. Not to mention stainless steel reusable pitchers, and cups and urinals and bedpans sterilized with the dependable autoclave.

I remember my starting pay was $8.65 an hour. I worked nights on a 15 bed oncology unit, with one LPN and sometimes a CNA, who could sleep standing up against the wall of a dark hallway, LOL. I remember when "pant-suit" uniforms were FINALLY allowed, albeit with stict limitations to style. I remember mixing the pre-hydrations, the chemo, giving it, mixing the Mannitol into the post-hydration. We sedated the patients so when they had N/V they had amnesia for the event. We tied them in bed with Posey vests and got them up every 2 hours to void. I remember the pride of our work on our small "specialty" unit, the gratitude of the patients, the closeness of relationships with them and their families. I remember the sorrow and the honor of sitting with them when their final minutes came. I miss those days of nursing. It was total patient care. I think alot was lost when the big acute care units opened and our specialties blended to the ordinary.

What a great thread, I really enjoyed reading most of it. In lecture yesterday our instructor was just telling us how working night shifts all the patients would be asleep and nurses and dr's would all be hanging out at the nurses station smoking.

Here's another trip down Nostalgia Lane...how about back when hospitals had their own I.V. therapy Dept. RN's?
How many of you nurses still lament that loss? They rocked!!!

I told some of my students about taping butt cheeks up to the side rails, or elevating swollen testes that way. They weren't sure they believed me, but all the guys were horrified (and wincing).

We used those new fangled hair blow dryers to dry the betadine onto reddened heels and coccyxes (cocci?) to prevent complete breakdown.

The cocaine sitting on top of the crash cart on L&D for nose bleeds.

Full name and diagnosis on the board for all to see. We were cautioned not to write SOB next to "mom's" name, we had to write it out.

Prisoners in beds on the general multibed ward, with a leg shackle to one corner of the bed. No guards. Had the guy sit up in a chair to change the linens, and had to keep stepping over the chain as you moved around the bed.