A Nurse's Diary 1992

[Davey Do]

Yesterday, I bought an empty 1992 diary for $1.00 from an antique shop.

I began going through several  of my journals, as I have a tendency to journal jump and make drawings and notes in any journal that's within reach, and have begun transferring random nursing related notes to the empty 1992 diary.

I thought it would be fun to share nursing-related notes that are nearly 30 years old with AN members.

Some transferred notes are direct quotes, some are summations of notes, while others are a combination of the two. I also include the date the note was transferred.

Although my notes are sporadic, I did find an entry for the first day of the new year:

 

 

Basically, an LPN in another cottage had a patient put into seclusion, yet was not qualified to serve a restriction of rights (ROR). The LPN called around the campus until she could find an RN to make an assessment and serve the ROR.

I went to the cottage, found seclusion was an appropriate action, and served the ROR. I reminded the LPN to obtain a doctor's order for the seclusion and left to return to my cottage.

The LPN neglected to obtain a doctor's order and I got called on the carpet.

 

 

 

 

[Davey Do]

I located and transferred the results and plan concerning the above situation:

 

[Daisy4RN]

I wasnt keeping a diary in 1992 but if I did one entry would have went like this...

'I got yelled at today by a customer because the kitchen didn't cook the food right'.

As I have said here before I used to work as a waitress. From that (above) statement alone it would be hard to tell which job that was!

 

[Davey Do]

1 hour ago, Daisy4RN said:

I wasnt keeping a diary in 1992 

Most likely, it doesn't matter that you didn't keep a journal, Daisy, because the majority of us lead relatively boring lives and are unable to express ourselves well enough in the written word to be interesting to others.

It's like someone said: "Just because it happened to you doesn't make it interesting".

I've kept journals since back in the '70's, and let me tell you- the majority of my entries are a real snooze fest.

My journals only became interesting when my cartoons and other drawings took precedence. Oh, I have journals with drawings from over 40 years ago, but drawings did not dominate until the mid '90's, when I got into the public art thing. I figured that if I was going to be a freelance artist, I needed to practice at it every day.

Where once I struggled to come up with one piece of self-perpetuated artwork a day, I now will sometimes do as many as twenty. Or, I'll complete an involved work in a day's time.

Speaking of art, before I even thought about this thread and sharing my almost 30 year old entries from my journals, I found an entry where I mentioned my art room in my newly built house. I also noted that I was putting in applications at other places, in hopes of leaving Anomaly State Hospital:

 

 

None of my applications proved fruitful. I don't recall anything from Cowville, and the position at WRTH fell through because the CD unit never came into being. I was offered a position at ACH the following year, 1993, as a school nurse, but turned It down when offered a position as an HH agency NS.

Thanks for sharing in this walk down Memory Lane, Daisy!

[Guest 1152923]

Davey Do, I love going down memory lane and although I've never kept a journal (wish I had), I can still somehow remember most of my many coworkers over the years.  I also remember well my salary as a graduate nurse in 1992; $12.75/hr (thought I was making bank).  It seems unbelievable, but I remember not so long ago, employees smoking in the cafeteria, the various 'smoking' lounges, and the cigarette vending machines located in the hospital.  

[Davey Do]

1 hour ago, morelostthanfound said:

my salary as a graduate nurse in 1992; $12.75/hr 

I left Anomaly State Hospital in September 1992 to work at Buoy Memorial in ER and med surge. I don't remember my pay at the state hospital, but at Buoy I made $12.50/hour.

It was kind of a strange pay rate- the nurses worked 36 hours per week but were paid for forty.

Buoy is a small rural 19 bed hospital with two rooms for ER and an attached 40 bed LTC facility. The typical census while I worked there was 3-6 patients. On MNs, there was one RN assigned for ER and one for med surge.

I once said that my entire year's experience in ER would make one boring episode of the soon-to-be TV show "ER". There was A LOT of down time, as I noted in my journal:

 

 

 

For example, one time I did a three 12 hour ER stint and only had one patient who came in because he was having a headache.

There were a few times, as one Doc noted, "We saved that patient's life".

But the majority of the time, there was little or nothing to do. About this time, my Mom had given me a small drawing journal and I began taking it to work. I drew this on the night of December 11, 1992:

 

 

As far as your wish that you had kept a journal, MLTF, it's never too late to jot down memories. If you choose to do so, make it an enjoyable experience by not being concerned about grammar, spelling or penmanship- just let the words flow. I term it "spewing", and it's also a great catharsis for dealing with feelings.

[JBMmom, MSN, NP]

3 hours ago, Davey Do said:

it's also a great catharsis for dealing with feelings

I have never kept anything for myself, but I know that a couple times in the past six months or so, I have found that coming here to share experiences with other nurses that can understand and relate to certain situations has been very beneficial. I have absolutely no artistic talent, so I would doubt I would come up with journal entries worthy of reading 30 years down the road, but perhaps the reflection, even without public sharing and feedback, would be interesting. I have journals for each of my kids from when they were younger. Funny enough I wrote in them weekly back when they were young and really didn't do much of anything. Now that they're older and much more interesting as people, I don't find the time.