You know you've been a nurse too long when...

[wooh]

You know you've been a nurse too long when you can't enjoy a movie because of the half minute of CPR compressions only being given at about 50 per minute, with bent arms and there's a flat line on the monitor DURING the compressions. Oh, and it's the obstetrician doing the compressions.

[BeckDuman]

being a Hospice Nurse and walking through the supermarket, hearing someone cough and thinking "I'll be seeing you soon."

[Rhi007]

When you can clear an entire store by talking to a cashier about your day, straight faced and not leaving out the gory parts

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

Everyone asks for a doggie bag and consumes a lot of alcohol when eating out with you and your wound care RN daughter......

[R!XTER]

When the joys of summertime are diagnosing venous/arterial insufficiency and pedal edema

[DalekRN]

You see a baby in the grocery store giving early feeding cues and you're like... That kids gonna scream if you don't feed it soon!

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

Hmmm.....you know you've been a nurse too long when you find yourself wanting to tell the annoying kid pointing to the scratch on his finger "well, we COULD remove it at the nearest knuckle, partial amputation isn't as hard to recover from as you'd think".....

[jmdRN]

Hmmm.....you know you've been a nurse too long when you find yourself wanting to tell the annoying kid pointing to the scratch on his finger "well, we COULD remove it at the nearest knuckle, partial amputation isn't as hard to recover from as you'd think".....

That's been my standard mom-response since before being a nurse... the littlest booboos from my kids would get a look at, and if nothing visible to the naked eye, the threat of amputation (in jest!) as a result, usually followed with a cartoon bandaid afterwards!

Caught my 13 y.o. daughter telling her little cousin "We'll have to amputate it" after he fell in the grass and scruffed a knee over the weekend LOL!

[Pepper The Cat, BSN, RN]

You see a young man looking at the charts. You ask him " can I help you" He says " I'm just looking for some charts"

You ask who he is, thinking he is some teenage volunteer, looking for empty chart binders. He answers " I'm Dr Doogie Howser"

OMG! I swear! He looked about 18 years old! And the I realized, that me, the too close to 50 year old nurse, may be taking orders from some young whipper snapper half my age. Oy. Might be time for retirement!

[brillohead, ADN, RN]

... when watching movies or TV shows and a character names a medication that has side effects that totally doesn't match

I spazzed out the other night watching Royal Pains when Dr Hank wrote a prescription for Loperamide. I actually paused the show to vent that Imodium is an OTC medication, you don't need to write a scrip for it, you just tell the stupid patient to go *******' buy some Imodium at the *******' drugstore!

Then a deep cleansing breath, and I returned to watching the rest of the show...

[sharpeimom]

You know you've been a nurse too long when you and your husband go out to dinner with friends and there is a couple with a two year old seated at the next table. They keep feeding her bites that are much too large and she keeps choking. The capper is when they begin to hand her chunks of melon, grapes, and pineapple.

They were so big she had to cram them into her mouth then didn't have enough teeth to properly chew. On the second chunk, I got up, went to their table, and cut her entire meal into more manageable bites and removed the corn on the cob. Overly cautious with the corn? Maybe.

[Clementia]

Upon entering any public building, one of your first actions is to look for the AED.

You assess elderly passersby in Walmart. "Hmmm...uneven gait, favoring left leg...looks like bone-on-bone DJD to me...I'll see you on my unit after your hip replacement, ma'am/sir."

[rnccf2007, BSN, RN]

When you fixate on people's veins when standing at the checkout line at a store.