How to handle cussing nurses? - Page 3

I agree with you NurseBee....I work nights 7-7 and we are constantly busy!

Usually between 7-11 we're all running around like chickens with our heads cut off, many nights without aide's and understaffed. Once we get everyone settled and in bed (if we're lucky enough to not have the sweet little Alzheimer's pts thinkin it's 6am and time to get up)...we're busy doing other things, ie: Stocking med carts, check crash carts, cleaning up rooms from dicharges (our housekeeping is VERY anal where I work..won't clean a room if a Coke can is sitting on the bedside table), not to mention the 2 hour charting that we are required to do on all our patients, and 4 hour reassessments. I find plenty to do on nights!

Not to mention the can of worms involving the 24 hr chart check and trying to second guess what went on all day and play CYA for everybody. Yeesh...somedays I am really tempted to NOT look back in the chart for fear of what I will find undone, questionable or just plain wrong...and what chaos follows.

When I did charge on PCU this is what most of my night was: putting out fires started when I wasn't there and playing catchup with all left undone (again when I wasn't there) and trying to help my staff do they best they could. Too bad the patients need care on top of all that....and of course it wasn't til 2 am that we got them partly settled down enough so we could LOOK at our charts. THEN the real headaches started.

Ahh..the life of a night nurse....days tends to think we 'sit' and have it easy. Only time I was sitting I was desperately on the phone or into charts, problem solving, reentering/fixing order errors, etc...this required 'some' sitting on my unit as that's where the computer/phone was....ya know I never got a break...didn't dare leave the unit as charge, but I made sure my staff got breaks.

RN1976, what kind of unit do you work on, chick?? A Kidney Stone unit? I say that because our kidney stone patients are the easiest. Admit 'em, give them a patient-controlled-administration pain pump and a strainer for their urine... they're good to go!

What I'm saying is... you say that you have worked night shift and "sat on your butt" most of the night, routinely. Then you must work on a unit where the patients are, routinely, pretty low maintenance at night. I work night shift and, with a patient load of 7 patients, I may STILL run my tail off all night long. That's because I work on a post-surgical unit, but we also see a variety of other types of patients, including renal, oncology, pediatrics, etc. I work in a community hospital. =)

It sounds to me like the "extra" duties aren't divided very fairly between the shifts, on your unit. =) If the night shift nurses have so little to do, then THEY need to be the ones changing needle boxes, changing IV tubing, doing extra paperwork, etc..

Ew, I'm glad we don't have to change needleboxes! Our Environmental staff takes care of that little job! =)

:hatparty: