What is your biggest nursing pet peeve?

Nursie30 · Apr 11, 2004

1. Corporate...nuf said

2. Cold food

3. Nurses eating while feeding residents

4. Not toileting residents

5. CNA walks in room, turns on light, pulls sheet back, 1 swift move resident is from bed to w/c, all done by scaring the hell out of them.

6. Lack of privacy for residents, not pulling curtain, pushing resident down hall only in towel

7. Having All residents in bed by 6pm

8. Start getting residents "predressed" when they come in and then have them all up by 3 or 4pm

9. Skipping rounds

10. When they do rounds, forgetting pericare and oral care

11. Families that are way to involved and need to get lives

12. Families that are waiting for them to die, to get the money

13. Shower aide that can do 40 showers in 2 hrs or less

14. No nail care, oh we don't cut their toenails the podiatrist does that

15. Walking down the hall and seeing a resident being pushed by an aide going faster than the speed of sound, hair flying behind them.

16. Pulling a gerichair backwards

17. Turn off the IV or feeding while dressing resident, but then don't let you know

18. Applying a nitro patch to find that the resident already has 3 stuck all over his chest and back

19. Resident comes back from hosp with FC, and nurse doesn't D/C it when there is no Dx for having it

20. I knew I could think of at least 20 pet peeves...........lol

But, I haven't worked in over 7 months and can't find a job, I miss all of it.......lol

Oh one more........Calling family member, telling them the patient has taken a turn for the worse, family member asks, how long, should we come on out or do you think it will be awhile..........

critcarenurse16 · Apr 11, 2004

5. general poor nursing care - nil orally patients with no mouth care...
4. messiness - it's not that hard to tidy up as you go along, and leaving chairs in the middle of the room at night is just asking for trouble
3. clueless relatives - yes, I know your wife wants to be put back to bed (a three person job that takes a good 30 min because she's just that demanding), but as you would have heard by the running and such, we had a code, the patient's going to ICU, and this "packing thing" I'm doing means the resus trolley will be ready to roll if anyone else crashes
2. even more clueless visitors - I'd be delighted to tell you where your alleged friend is, but unless you can give me more information than "John" I can't help you.Do you know his last name? But you're really great friends. Uh-huh. Did you check at the visitors' desk on your way in? No. Just wandered up here on spec? Okay. Buh-bye
1. okay, this is a little different from everyone else's - if I see another unconscious patient on TV, tubed or not, lying flat on their back with the bed rails down, I will throw something hard at the television while I scream aloud "It's not that freaking hard to get right!"

You are absolutely funny--I bet you're a hoot to work with! I know what you mean with the visitor thing. I had a patient who was circling the drain--cadiogenic shock--and then coded and here is the lady next door (we have an open ICU floor plan so you can here everything going on to some degree) she puts her call light on to get off the BSC. When she didn't get a nurse to come she started yelling "I'm done you know-- someone help me get back to bed" She sat there of course. Some people are so clueless. :angryfire

lisasmom · Apr 12, 2004

I work midnights - my biggest pet peeve is that many of the day nurses don't seem to realize that at 7am we want to GO HOME - immediately if not sooner!! Before they get report they think it is okay to stand around and chit chat about what their kids did last night, get some coffee, show pictures of the baby... It's sad that most of these nurses started out on nights and know what it's like. And it's not just my present hospital, it's been like that everywhere I've worked. Burns my butt!!!

Believe me it doesn't matter which shift you work. I work days and the evening shift comes in and will chit-chat for about an hour before they listen to report. We can not leave until they are out of report and on the floor.

Some days I would like to put them on the floor :uhoh3: :angryfire

Noah · Apr 12, 2004

petty factionalism among different groups ... surgical services hiding things so that they're ready for the next ortho, or neuro, or general case ... while cardiac, or pedi, or whoever else will just have to go without. Happens all the time when the O.R. interacts with the rest of the hospital, prime example being a nurse from a medical trying to foist off a pt with a fresh trache on room air for transport rather than give us an O2 tank with a regulator which "belonged" to the floor in question (pt was on plenty of O2 in his room and his sats were low nineties *with it!*) ... as if pt comfort, let alone safety, needs to be put on the back burner to our convenience. and as if the people down the hall or up the elevator don't have sick patients to care for as well!

LolaRN · Apr 12, 2004

Staff who think that DNR is an excuse for sloppy nursing care. Charge nurses who sit at the desk in full view of the patient who is trying to beat you up but never comes in to help. :angryfire

moia · Apr 12, 2004

When I worked in kentucky I had the opportunity to work with an incredible CNA, she was dedicated,funny and really really good at her job.I returned to Canada where I met her opposite and a patient pointed out to me once that she had been mopping the same square tile for an entire shift...8 hours..i took a closer look..she was sleeping standing up leaning on the mop.

She would also do the pretend patient turn..where she would move her arms but wouldn't actually weight bear..the RN would bear the entire weight of turn...

Other pet peeves include the nurse that is always five minutes late..never 15 just 5..so you can't get really mad...also they always had time to get their coffee

The nurse that couldn't get the IV or the IV just clotted

The nurse that has the "special" relationship with the doc and feels like she can go ahead and do anything without an order and always makes sure to let you know all about her "special" relationship and how much time you have wasted because you don't have that very special relationship.

Super Nurse...or mrs Clean..the nurse that cleans everything but can't do anything else..the patient is spotless but as soon as things get a little complicated she falls apart

The charting fool..this one can make you insane...they call you over to do everything for their patient while they chart every move you make

The family that questions everyone twice...the family that questions every shift and then compares notes and then goes to the docs and compares notes and then has a melt down in the middle of the unit and threatens lawsuit

The wife

the wife that announces to anyone that listens that "he can't take anymore" right when you come in to start his IV..when you question husband on why he came to hospital wife sobs and howls and husband tells wife to get the f*** out and leave him alone. Ofcourse..couldn't get IV anyway...

Pet Peeve that family are allowed to dismember patients...patient after heart surgery would only survive if arms and legs were amputated but patient could not consent as in coma family should not be allowed to consent to this..patient should be allowed to die...this was a terrible thing to see when this man woke up...he died anyway....

Biggest pet peeve is junior staff/senior staff thing.so you get the levo/epi/milri trached open chest balloon pump with cvvhd for the 4 day long weekend while they get a floor patient......

right now my biggest pet peeve is I really suck at IV's and I need to get a lot better very soon.

talaxandra · Apr 13, 2004

You are absolutely funny--I bet you're a hoot to work with! I know what you mean with the visitor thing.

Thankyou, thankyou - I'm here all week :)

I can tell I've been on nights too long, because this whole clueless-idiots thing is starting to annoy me more by the week. Three nights, three codes, and every night there's been an idiot in my face. Prepare for a mini rant!

Night one was the husband who didn't quite get that a code, and subsequent crash cart restock is a little more vital than utilising the entire night shift to put his wife back to bed. Okay, she's tired and wants to sleep in bed (even though she's slept half the day away in a chair), but she's perfectly comfortable...

Night two started with a phone call from a dialysis patient on PD whose fistula arm is hot, red, swollen. "Can you feel a thrill?" "What's that?" I explain, then ask how long ago the fistula was formed - seven years ago, and she's never checked it. Okay, how long's it been like this for? Since early Thursday morning, and it's now 2200 Saturday. Perhaps she thought we close on Good Friday. Uh-huh, I know it's late, and you live almost twenty minutes away, but I still think coming in would be a good idea.

Then our code - unwell-looking man in his late seventies, in AF for two days, looking grey and dyspnoeic but good on paper. The resident comes up, takes gases and says she'll be back. Gases are fine, patient still looks less than crisp, get the resident to come back and reassess. By now he's really labouring along, RR mid-twenties but massive accessory use and he sounds like he's gargling concrete. Resident calls the reg, who's coming up. Twenty minutes later, no reg. Apparently he'll be up "within an hour" and in the meantime the resident'll take gases. Oh dear. Patient so shut down we can't even feel a femoral pulse, let alone bleed him. We decide, over the protests of the resident, to call a code. Reg turns up, manages to get gases, pH 7.22, CXR shows (wait! brace yourselves!) "really significant whiteout", and ICU decide they'll take him.

Night three, and I'm sure the code's going to be my renal patient who was going to have an elective transplant this week but has come in tonight with hematemesis, five days of constipation, and a K+ of 6.4 before she had three units of blood in cas. After two lots of resonium in cas they give her IV actrapid and 50% glucose and send her up to me - "two-hourly sugars," says the renal reg.

I decide to do them half-hourly, and lo! an hour after coming up she hypo's. Sort that out and ask for the resident to check her over. She's drowsy but oriented, hypotensive, and spikes a 38.8C temp. The renal reg is happy with a SBP >95, so she drops to 85. 100ml of saline and it falls to 75. After another 100, then 2 x 250 of saline the ICU reg decides we'll try some albumin, and she's cured (yay!)

I'm just finishing off her charting and looking forward to actually eating something (it's 0400) when I get buzzed.

"The guy in the next bed vomited and now he's breathing funny."

The epileptic guy in the next bed is flat on his back, vomitus everywhere, with a GCS of 5. Flip him over, press the code button as I grab the suction tubing, only to find it's not long enough to reach the bed. Nothing in his mouth or throat, as it turns out. GCS comes up to 10, SaO2's okay but he sounds really bad, and he's massively shut down. Temp 34.1, so we put on a Bair Hugger just as another ward calls a code and we lose the crash team.

Temp's all the way up to 35.5, BP/PR are okay, but he's breathing hard at 38/min. His renal inmpairment (that the treating unit hadn't chased up) is now acute renal failure, and tell the reg I'll put in a catheter as he's taking another set of gases. It's now 0640 and I don't know where the night's gone.

"Um," says the resident. "What was his last GCS?" 9, ten minutes ago. And now it's 3.

Resident rings the ICU reg, and they're in there working out what they're going to do when I head off to start handing over to the morning staff. The girls in the area were on last night, and nothing else has happened (pre-transpalnt girl's fine), so I plan to whisk through it and get back to my sick guy. Not necessary - at 0702 he stopped breathing and the docs decided to let him go. Then I get back those last gases - pH 7.03, bicarb

Where's the annoying idiot in this story? The guy in the next bed, who we moved into a holding room as soon as things calmed down a little (until then he kept pulling back the curtain between the beds to watch us).

"I'm very unhappy you didn't let me stay and watch. What happened? Oh, and if I miss out on breakfast because I'm in this room I'm gonna make a formal complaint."

I love days off.

PS Sorry - not such a mini rant after all!

**canoehead, BSN, RN** · Apr 13, 2004

And you were TRANSFERRING to ICU? Sounds to me like you were already there.

critcarenurse16 · Apr 13, 2004

Thankyou, thankyou - I'm here all week :)
I can tell I've been on nights too long, because this whole clueless-idiots thing is starting to annoy me more by the week. Three nights, three codes, and every night there's been an idiot in my face. Prepare for a mini rant!
Night one was the husband who didn't quite get that a code, and subsequent crash cart restock is a little more vital than utilising the entire night shift to put his wife back to bed. Okay, she's tired and wants to sleep in bed (even though she's slept half the day away in a chair), but she's perfectly comfortable...
Night two started with a phone call from a dialysis patient on PD whose fistula arm is hot, red, swollen. "Can you feel a thrill?" "What's that?" I explain, then ask how long ago the fistula was formed - seven years ago, and she's never checked it. Okay, how long's it been like this for? Since early Thursday morning, and it's now 2200 Saturday. Perhaps she thought we close on Good Friday. Uh-huh, I know it's late, and you live almost twenty minutes away, but I still think coming in would be a good idea.
Then our code - unwell-looking man in his late seventies, in AF for two days, looking grey and dyspnoeic but good on paper. The resident comes up, takes gases and says she'll be back. Gases are fine, patient still looks less than crisp, get the resident to come back and reassess. By now he's really labouring along, RR mid-twenties but massive accessory use and he sounds like he's gargling concrete. Resident calls the reg, who's coming up. Twenty minutes later, no reg. Apparently he'll be up "within an hour" and in the meantime the resident'll take gases. Oh dear. Patient so shut down we can't even feel a femoral pulse, let alone bleed him. We decide, over the protests of the resident, to call a code. Reg turns up, manages to get gases, pH 7.22, CXR shows (wait! brace yourselves!) "really significant whiteout", and ICU decide they'll take him.
Night three, and I'm sure the code's going to be my renal patient who was going to have an elective transplant this week but has come in tonight with hematemesis, five days of constipation, and a K+ of 6.4 before she had three units of blood in cas. After two lots of resonium in cas they give her IV actrapid and 50% glucose and send her up to me - "two-hourly sugars," says the renal reg.
I decide to do them half-hourly, and lo! an hour after coming up she hypo's. Sort that out and ask for the resident to check her over. She's drowsy but oriented, hypotensive, and spikes a 38.8C temp. The renal reg is happy with a SBP >95, so she drops to 85. 100ml of saline and it falls to 75. After another 100, then 2 x 250 of saline the ICU reg decides we'll try some albumin, and she's cured (yay!)
I'm just finishing off her charting and looking forward to actually eating something (it's 0400) when I get buzzed.
"The guy in the next bed vomited and now he's breathing funny."
The epileptic guy in the next bed is flat on his back, vomitus everywhere, with a GCS of 5. Flip him over, press the code button as I grab the suction tubing, only to find it's not long enough to reach the bed. Nothing in his mouth or throat, as it turns out. GCS comes up to 10, SaO2's okay but he sounds really bad, and he's massively shut down. Temp 34.1, so we put on a Bair Hugger just as another ward calls a code and we lose the crash team.
Temp's all the way up to 35.5, BP/PR are okay, but he's breathing hard at 38/min. His renal inmpairment (that the treating unit hadn't chased up) is now acute renal failure, and tell the reg I'll put in a catheter as he's taking another set of gases. It's now 0640 and I don't know where the night's gone.
"Um," says the resident. "What was his last GCS?" 9, ten minutes ago. And now it's 3.
Resident rings the ICU reg, and they're in there working out what they're going to do when I head off to start handing over to the morning staff. The girls in the area were on last night, and nothing else has happened (pre-transpalnt girl's fine), so I plan to whisk through it and get back to my sick guy. Not necessary - at 0702 he stopped breathing and the docs decided to let him go. Then I get back those last gases - pH 7.03, bicarb
Where's the annoying idiot in this story? The guy in the next bed, who we moved into a holding room as soon as things calmed down a little (until then he kept pulling back the curtain between the beds to watch us).
"I'm very unhappy you didn't let me stay and watch. What happened? Oh, and if I miss out on breakfast because I'm in this room I'm gonna make a formal complaint."
I love days off.
PS Sorry - not such a mini rant after all!

sound like a rough night indeed! Enjoy your day off:balloons:

suzanne4, RN · Apr 13, 2004

Orientated is actually correct English...the type we invented in England! Oriented is an Americanism that drives me nuts!
orientated
Orientate \O"ri*en*tate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Orientated; p. pr. & vb. n. Orientating.] [From Orient.] 1. To place or turn toward the east; to cause to assume an easterly direction, or to veer eastward.
2. To arrange in order; to dispose or place (a body) so as to show its relation to other bodies, or the relation of its parts among themselves.

Orientation as per what you wrote pertains to spatial being, not one someone has in their brain. There is a difference................................example: if you are new to a unit, you will orientate yourself with your surroundings. you have hospital or unit orientation, but if you are asking if your patient knows what day of the week it is, that is whether he/she is oriented or not.

Hope that this helps................. :balloons:

(p.s. The Orient is also where I live!)

movealong · Apr 13, 2004

My biggest pet peeve used to be doctors who "punt". You page the medical md oncall, who says to call the surgeon. You call the surgeon oncall, he says to call the medical md. I just want someone to okay the orders I need.

People who call want to know what the sx for this or that disease are. They have pages and pages of calls in their history about all kinds of diseases and problems, all unrelated. I always tell them to give me the sx that they ARE having and we will go from there. I hate giving them ammo.

One of the worst things I saw by family members was their fighting over who would get what jewelry when their mother died. They actually started stripping the rings from her fingers while she was still alive but unresponsive in the bed, and fighting over them: literally. We had security come, we removed all the rings, watch, necklace and sent them to the safe. Which brings me to next item. patients that come in wearing really expensive stuff, multiple diamond rings, necklaces, watches and large sums of money. They don't want to sent the stuff home, don't want to lock it up. You just know something will happen to that stuff while they are in............

military girl · Apr 14, 2004

I know exactly what you mean. I'm not beautiful, but a very attractive female.

I came from working days to working nights, and believe me, I had no idea what working nights was like.

Yes, they always staff nights with less staff because day shift nurses seem to think that patients sleep at night, NOT!! Any yes, we do seem to have a bigger patient load than days does.

Each shift should walk a mile in the other's shoes then you can see how the other half lives. :balloons: