You Might Be An "old" School Nurse

[DoGoodThenGo]

From Scrubs magazine.

http://scrubsmag.com/you-might-be-an-ol-school-nurse-if/

Enjoy and feel free to add your own ideas of what makes one old school.

10. You still abbreviate everything.

9. You enjoy giving IM Demerol vs. pain pumps.

8. You're older than the doctors you work with.

7. You tell the whining new nurses that you took care of 30 pt. vs. 6.

6. "Treatment Nurse," "Med Wound Nurse"...what is that? You did it all!

5. You'll give your patients a bedpan and don't wait for an aide.

4. Your starting salary was $3.50/hour when factory workers made $5.

3. The way you checked sugar levels was with a dipstick.

2. You don't recognize the sound of an IV pump (you never used them).

1. You wore white caps, uniform, shoes and hose, and NEVER wore them in public.

[nicenurselpn, LPN]

i remember as a patient in the mid 70's as a child, having glass iv bottles on my iv pole. one time i got up to go to the bathroom and the pole tipped over. what a mess that was for the nurse to clean up!!

my mom was a nurse in the mid 60's and remembers having to sterilize needles and sharpen them to be reused.

nicenurse lpn

[systoly]

You might be......if for the first ten years you were the only male nurse at your facility (or any facility you worked at).

[LuxCalidaNP]

Um... I don't think anyone misses having to stand when the doc came in the room...bleh.

[canesdukegirl, BSN, RN]

Do y'all remember snapping off the needle after use? Scary to think that we did that!

[LadyinScrubs, ASN, RN]

what about the steel bedpans that were so cold that they made the patient jump?

what about using demerol with all surgical patient and now it is not used.

what about one nursing assistance for 36 patients

what about a patient staying longer in the hospital because the daughter was going on vacation.

what about a appendectomy staying for 5 days not ruptured?

that happens even today. it is not unusual for a family (sole caretaker of an elderly family member) to bring the pt to the ed on friday. the pt is admitted for observation or whatever, and the family goes out of town. when the pt is ready for discharge, there is no one answering the phone or the family is out of state. dilemma--where to place the patient, but the pt only want to go home to their own bed. doing floor case management gives one real insight into family dynamics. as a caretaker of an elderly, bedbound family member, i am getting ideas.

[Biffbradford]

Buretrols, mixing your own drips or K+ replacement, tube feeding dye - yes!

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

..playing with the mercury from the thermometers

..mercury calibrating the monitors in ICU to the transducers

..using ice water for cardiac outputs and it taking at least 3 people to do one

..the big huge green intra aortic ballon pumps

..washing out red rubber NGT to go to be resterilized

..making rounds with the doctor with his charts and taking the orders

..wait 1 hour for a stat blood sugar

...covered a glucose with a dipstick

..filling out all the AM labs by hand

..you bought one pair of “clinics” and that meant you were going to remain in the nursing field one more year.

…not only did you get up so the docs could sit, you brought them an ashtray to the station with their coffee.

…Candy Stripers worked in the hospital

..pulse OX???? what's a pulse ox? If we wanted to know an 02 sat We called for ABG's.....AFTER we got the order of course..

[elthia]

Yep ! and glass syringes for paraldehyde...

dying tube feedings blue to help distinguish between coughing up phlegm or feeds and possibly aspirating....

glass thermometers being issued with the admit kit

Versed at the bedside

I remember going going back and forth with this nurse one day about how we need to dye this pt's tube feeding. The pt had a trach with breakdown around the stoma, and had a peg. He came from home, and and he was taking a morphine solution that was blue in color , along with tube feeds. The pt also had copious secretions. Well Sally old school nurse wanted to stop the tube feeds until the tube feeds were dyed to make sure that the pt wasn't aspirating. I kept saying that the secretions were NOT aspirated tube feeds because the pt received blue colored morphine solution and that was the same as dying the tube feed. The secretions were not blue tinged like the morphine like he received down his peg, so he wasn't aspirating. I thought it was a no brainer. Of course I was a relatively new nurse with less than 1 year experience at the time, so I was overruled. The tube feeds were held, until dye could be obtained, and as we worked for a government hospital that ended up being 2 days.

[xtxrn, ASN, RN]

Versed at the bedside??? OMG, now I'm really jealous. I wish I had that at most of my patient's bedsides, or at least mine, lol.

LOL Yeah- it was used for bone marrows, chest tube insertions (sometimes)....whenever it was beneficial to not have a moving target This was in 1988 or 1989

[xtxrn, ASN, RN]

My first job (GN- only RN educated body in the building of 150 residents) involved autoclaving some of the instruments- I can't remember what (1985). But I remember having to pack the stuff in the paper/plastic bags and put tape on that changed color when it was "cooked"....

I still prefer IM pain control if the doc won't order a basal dose on the PCA. Punch the button enough times to fall asleep, only to wake up hurting worse because of no constant dose... IM's were good for 3-4 hours. Had one orthopedic surgeon who would order 22g spinal needles for IMs on larger patients...I always felt SO bad dragging that thing in the room...I'm sure some of them just quit asking for pain meds because of the needle.... he was a great doc- very good results, and nice to work with. But those needles....

Pre-op meds were almost always Demerol and droperidol (?sp) IM on call to the OR.

Anesthesia would come up and start the tough IVs if all of the nurses had either looked and/or tried to get a line in :)

Using baby bottle nipples from the nursery to open ampules to protect from sliced fingers :)

Ahhhh- the good old days

[anon456, BSN, RN]

There is a local heart and vein clinic that does outpatient surgery stuff, and the nurses still wear the white uniform complete with hose and hat!! It is optional but many choose to wear it. I take a family member there for treatments sometimes and get a kick out of it.

I had an old-timer L&D nurse tell me that when women came in with preterm labor they would give them IV's with alcohol drips! They were often very drunk but it stopped labor.

[mama_d, BSN, RN]

Wow, ya'll are making me feel youngish!

I do remember the blue dye, though.

Most of all though I remember what it was like pre-PG. Ah, the good ol' days when you didn't have your "scores" in your face EVERY SINGLE SHIFT.