So what WAS nursing like in the "good old days"?

ernurse2244 · Feb 2, 2004

Graduate 1975 here. Let's see...mercury BP's and thermometers. Played with the mercury if either broke. Counted drops for IV's. Started a new IV site each day with a butterfly needle every morning, discontinued after 8 hours. On evening shift were expected to take the BP of every visitor in the room. Cholecystectomies, hysterectomies and the rare C-section stayed 10 days. Only exam gloves were in the treatment rooms for the docs to use. Patient's families brought us LOTS of food. First T'giving I worked, brought me full plate of turkey and dressing and all the fixin's. Fresh tomatoes out of the garden...we always asked for a loaf of bread from the kitchen each night knowing what our supper would be (can you tell I am from the south?) "Good evening" was adequate charting. Had a med tray filled from multi-dose vials...I could tell you the name of every med on the tray. Staffing...one charge nurse with no patient assignment, one LPN to do treatments, another RN to pass meds, an orderly to take care of the male patients. Charge nurse did the charting. Really sick patients died. Occasional admit to the ICU meant probable death...a floor nurse was pulled to staff it until they died or got better. Very little was disposable. Bed pans, emesis basins were sterilized and returned for further use. You could admit grandmother because you were her primary caregiver and needed a vacation. Medicare approved a specific number of days they would pay then you called and begged for more days...and they would grant it and you would get paid. You could call the pharmacist in town and he would open the store to fill a prescription. And I could go on forever...not today's world.

findingmywayRN · Feb 2, 2004

RNPATL:

Thank you for such a detailed and thoughtful reply! It seems there's no going back to the days when patients stayed long enough in hospitals to get to know them. Today's health care system and technology have probably created sicker patients - not healing properly/thoroughly before discharge, prolonging the inevitable, teaching families to provide patient care at home that should be still done by nurses, etc. But, there are obviously many lifesaving benefits to modern medical technology. Plus, I couldn't imagine counting IV drip rates or sterilizing bedbans!! :eek:

findingmywayRN · Feb 2, 2004

Originally posted by ernurse2244
On evening shift were expected to take the BP of every visitor in the room....

"Good evening" was adequate charting. .

Really interesting stuff here!! But why did you have to take the BP of every visitor in the room??? :confused:

ernurse2244 · Feb 2, 2004

Just 'cause they asked me to...and I had the time.

LilgirlRN, ADN, RN · Feb 2, 2004

I graduated in 1987. AIDS had just come to the forefront. I worked in an intensive care unit, it was supposed to be cardiac but we took regular icu overflow too. we would look like we were going to outerspace just to walk in the room for our aids patients. We had gloves, but it was very common to not use them except when you knew the patient had HIV. one of my patients was the first patient to get TPA at our hospital in 1988 or so. I went to the ER in 1990. The single biggest difference in there is the sheer volume of patients that we see. i worked 11-7. we had 8 beds. me and an lpn, unit clerk and one doc. my big job was making sure the place was restocked. we saw 2-3 patients per night. we had one hellacious night we saw 16 patients, 3 were MI's, 2 went to surgery, 2 were transferred to other hospitals. the next day the doc that was on that night quit. today, that would have been a less than average night. today, at the same hospital there are no lpns, there are 4 rn's at night, 2 docs, a er tech and a unit secretary, the 8 beds are now 14 with 6 holding beds for folks waiting to be admitted. we didnt do conscious sedation back then. if you needed that much sedation you went to the or. luckily for er nurses, most er docs are also a breed apart, i personally have never been treated like crap by an er doc. the private docs are another matter, lol.

RNPATL, DNP, RN · Feb 2, 2004

Originally posted by findingmywayRN
Today's health care system and technology have probably created sicker patients - not healing properly/thoroughly before discharge, prolonging the inevitable, teaching families to provide patient care at home that should be still done by nurses, etc. But, there are obviously many lifesaving benefits to modern medical technology.

Early discharge, back in the days when it was new, attibuted, in my opinion, to many deaths, especially for the elderly patients. However, early discharges also created a whole new speciality in that nursing homes developed and opened sub-acute care units. These units would care for the patients after they discharged from the hospital and were to sick to go home. This also changed the complexion of the nursing homes, as patients were moving in and out of the nursing home about as fast as they were moving in and out of the hospital. As a result of the increased acuity in the nursing homes, assisted living facilities became the big rave .... people who use to go to nursing homes, were now not considered "sick enough" to be there.

I also recall my nursing instructor telling me that I only needed to wear gloves when I was doing a sterile procedure. I remember cleaning an elderly homeless man and I asked my instructor for a pair of gloves, she frowned at me and said ... "be a man!' ... can you believe that? Of course, today that would be unheard of!