Lazy nurse or what - Page 2

For me it's not so much that amount that needs to get done that makes a day really busy, but the way that I constantly get interrupted or something isn't as I expect it to be that causes me to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. Example:

Going in to hang IVs, give meds, and assess patient A. Patient B calls. He's having shaking chills. Now I need to stop what I'm doing with A, and go assess B, page the doctor, wait for him to call back, take orders, often stat orders, etc.

Or I go into an isolation room of patient I had day before. He needs an IV abx. I know I left my tubing from yesterday in there initialed, capped, dated, and out of the way so I don't need new tubing. Wrong. The night shift threw it out. Ungown, unglove, wash hands, get tubing, repeat in reverse. And while you're out of the room pharmacy calls with a detailed question on a patient you've never taken care of that requires you to look up orders and lab results to answer. And then hunt down the nurse taking care of the patient who is no where in be found.

Or you get a stat med order. Wait 40 minutes for it. Not there. Call pharmacy. They sent it to the wrong place, but can't remember where, they'll send it again. Now it takes 20 minutes before it's on the floor again. Meanwhile doctor comes on unit and asked if med has helped yet. And you have to explain why you haven't given it yet.

I could go on all day, but these are the sorts of things that make nursing frustrating and keep you running back and forth.

After you've been through school, passed the NCLEX, received your registration, AND worked for at least 6 months, then you'll have a better idea what a nurse deals with. Nursing wouldn't be as demanding, except most places are understaffed with too many redundant forms. So yes, nursing is that hard.

Especially starting off with "I have no healthcare experience" and "I'll be starting nursing school soon."

OP get a job as a aide so you can see some of what we do every day. There's a reason a job that only requires an associate's degree pays as well as it does.

blondy2061h, just have to do a thread hijack here...there was nobody else on the floor who could bring you a new package of tubing? (we used to have a lot of patients in isolation- I know what a sweaty, time-consuming, nose-running hassle it can be LOL)

But yes, OP, if I came on here and talked about what a great day I had when nobody at all yelled at me, all patients brought their meds including everything from every specialist to their appointments and their glucometers too and brought the detailed log books they were keeping, nobody noshowed, there were no suicide calls, and insurance covered every med the doc ordered, I would be charting on Allnurses in my sleep during a very good dream. It really is a blessing to be able to vent here.

Working at what? You just said you are not a nurse. You cannot compare nursing to any other job.

My experience with nursing has been that it is very polar. It seems to me that you are either having a great day in which everything is easily managed and you are on top of things without breaking a sweat...........or you are having a day that is impossible on every level. Not much in between really, its either one or the other.

So, when people have one of those bad days, they "vent" (as others have pointed out, a lot of venting goes on here and in RL with nurses) about it. People outside the profession sometimes get the impression that every day is that way, but we are simply venting about it. As another post pointed out, we don't go around venting about the good days so, people listening to us can definitely get an skewed view of what things are really like. They only hear about the bad days. They know every day is not really that bad, see nurses talking about the bad days...............so on so forth.

I will say this though, and it might be part of why you are wondering if nurses are "lazy" or not. I do notice, there seems to be a fairly sized portion of nurses who don't get over the bad days well. They never seem to move on. They'll ruin their own good days reliving the bad days. Just the other day, I watched as an IV nurse stood at the nurse's station and spent 45min. complaining about problems that.........take less than 5min. to solve. The reality was though that she was still unhappy about a different/recent day that truly was bad for her. So, it wasn't so much that she was having a bad day currently and needed to vent but that she was still venting about the day last week that bothered her so much. During the 45min. she stood at the nurses station complaining, her beeper went off twice and she ignored it to finish venting. Definitely someone who needs to "move on".

Hmmm...I wonder how this thread's gonna go...

/popcorn

Maybe the best answer is to let you find out on your own.

Already there...

Wow.....