When has your intuition saved the day?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

  1. Do you frequently depend on your intuition in your nursing care?

    • 12
      Yes
    • 1
      No
    • 1
      I'm not sure
    • 10
      If yes, my intuition has helped save lives.
    • 0
      If no, I really wish I were more in touch with my intuition.
    • 0
      If no, I don't believe in intuition.

24 members have participated

Assertion: Great nurses are incredibly intuitive.

Please share when your intuition has saved or helped a patient or when has your intuition helped in other areas of your life?

What is intuition? How would you describe it? How could others develop theirs?

Have you ever felt what your patient is feeling? Chest pain when they have chest pain? etc. Are you too empathic? If so, how do you manage it, so it doesn't disempower you?

Or is intuition really experience along with knowledge?

All opinions welcome.

Specializes in med-surg 5 years geriatrics 12 years.

I've had several times when I listened to my gut and was right. The first time was as a new nurse in a small hospital ER. Had a woman come in with back pain she'd had for several days. Was very calm, told me to finish my other patient. My gut had a different idea...put her on a moniter. massive MI. Sent to cardiac center...blew out her left ventricle. That's when I decided to ALWAYS listen to my gut.

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Specializes in PICU/NICU.

I had a baby post op heart- we closed her chest on Fri -she did well, had her Sat- she did well, Sun morning I started my assessment and thought her heart sounds were just a slight bit quieter than previous days- not quite muffled, but just a little quieter. I let the Fellow know, he was not impressed- said he thought she sounded fine.

Throughout the morning, I kept thinking she continued to sound a little different than the previous days and could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. No change in hemodynamics- I just had a feeling.

Called the Fellow again- plead my case, he said he was not about to call the CV surgeon on Sun morning on a hunch.

So....... about 1 hour later I did! Now calling the surgeon at home on Sunday is not something I had ever done before- usually the PICU team takes care of any problems for them. He was nice about it, told me that cardiology was upstairs doing an echo on another kid and he would ask them to come down and echo my kid.

Low and behold- the baby had a slow leak and was working on a tamopnade. Imagine the Fellows surprise when he found out the kid was going back to the OR.

I have learned to trust my self because of things like this. Better safe than sorry.

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