CIWA woes

Specialties Addictions

Published

You are reading page 3 of CIWA woes

Aurora77

861 Posts

Specializes in Med Surg.

Yeah, "how dare you" is a bit dramatic, but I was struggling to capture my utter disdain for nurses who pass judgment on their patients. I'm not a 22 year old kid, I am a new nurse yes, but I am looking down the barrel of fifty and I can say with absolute certainty that I will never do this.

Yes, this makes me better than you.

No you can't. Everyone (even we saintly nurses) pass judgments on others. It's human nature. Anyone who says they don't is lying.

It's what we do about those judgments that matters. Every practicing nurse has those trigger diagnoses or patients that aren't their favorite or that they simply don't like. We then make a choice, do we treat them badly or do we act as professionals and do what we need to to care for them.

wyogypsy, RN

197 Posts

With so many different areas of nursing to work in, there is no reason we don't find an area we like. In fact most of us would find more than one area we like. Thankfully we each like/don't like different areas. I would quit nursing tonight if I had to work labor/delivery. I don't want the screaming mothers and I don't want the babies that everyone thinks are so cute. BUT let me take care of their grandma or great-grandma any day. I love the elderly.

I loved correctional nursing. I hated rehab. So many of the staff - nurses, aides, therapists, physicians, etc. would make comments about how the drunk driver did it to himself, how the person not wearing a helmet deserved it, and the list goes on. I didnt hate rehab for those reasons because I didn't feel that way - it was that those patients just broke my heart. No matter how much most of them improved, they were never going to be a shadow of what they used to be. I couldn't take it.

We spend a huge quantity of our lives working, I feel life is too damn short to waste it working in a job that I don't like. There are always bad days, but if that is the majority of the days then I know it is time to move on.

subee, MSN, CRNA

1 Article; 5,430 Posts

Specializes in CRNA, Finally retired.

But what does C I W A actually stand for?

trudlebug

92 Posts

Specializes in Utilization Review/Case Management.

CIWA - What does CIWA stand for? Acronyms and abbreviations by ...unknown.gifacronyms.thefreedictionary.com/CIWA

Acronym, Definition. CIWA, Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment.

Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

No you can't. Everyone (even we saintly nurses) pass judgments on others. It's human nature. Anyone who says they don't is lying.

It's what we do about those judgments that matters. Every practicing nurse has those trigger diagnoses or patients that aren't their favorite or that they simply don't like. We then make a choice, do we treat them badly or do we act as professionals and do what we need to to care for them.

I disagree. I have never been this way. I have never been one to look down on or judge the ill or those in my care.

I won't start now.

Additionally, I am well inoculated by my own poor choices made early in life.

Indy, LPN, LVN

1,444 Posts

Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.

Yeah, okay, wow what a hornet's nest. I'm glad someone (forgot which poster, didn't hit reply) is better than me. It's two days since I left that shift, make that three, and my butt still has a bruise on it from where the dude tried to pull my cheek right off. Ever been in a bear trap? I haven't, this made me think of that. It was a rant, it was labeled as a rant, it was done on monday. It's thursday. Take the self righteousness and stuff it back into whatever hole it fell out of, I'm not buying it.

There is not now, and has never been, any sort of demand on nursing or on me personally to like my patients. There are things about most of them I do like. The alcoholics in violent DT's just aren't people I get all warm and fuzzy for. They aren't in the unit every day, and I don't need a break from ICU just because they exist. What I needed was a heating pad, a day or two of rest, (got that) and it helped to rant a bit. Thanks for being so understanding.

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN

1 Article; 20,908 Posts

Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
Yeah, okay, wow what a hornet's nest. I'm glad someone (forgot which poster, didn't hit reply) is better than me. It's two days since I left that shift, make that three, and my butt still has a bruise on it from where the dude tried to pull my cheek right off. Ever been in a bear trap? I haven't, this made me think of that. It was a rant, it was labeled as a rant, it was done on monday. It's thursday. Take the self righteousness and stuff it back into whatever hole it fell out of, I'm not buying it.

There is not now, and has never been, any sort of demand on nursing or on me personally to like my patients. There are things about most of them I do like. The alcoholics in violent DT's just aren't people I get all warm and fuzzy for. They aren't in the unit every day, and I don't need a break from ICU just because they exist. What I needed was a heating pad, a day or two of rest, (got that) and it helped to rant a bit. Thanks for being so understanding.

we all have those days...((HUGS))

RxOnly

136 Posts

Specializes in Psych/Substance Abuse, Ambulatory Care.
But what does C I W A actually stand for?

Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment

echoRNC711, BSN

227 Posts

Specializes in cardiac CVRU/ICU/cardiac rehab/case management.

Anoetos "I can say with absolute certainty that I will never do this."

(in reference to passing judgement )

]Anoetos,

I can admire your heart in the desire to seek to be non judgmental . However, As soon as something is simply not possible,you have opened a gate for it to not only become possible,but highly probable.

When we become aware of our frailties and capacity to judge only then are we in a position to do something about it. In the fixed mind their is no possibility of change.

It is humorous to me that we all can point the finger at another in judgement that the "other "person should be non judgmental! (Sort of like ,"you shouldn't judge but I am allowed to judge you ")

Hmm.sometimes we teach best what we most need to learn. (yep, myself included)

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN

1 Article; 5,115 Posts

As many of you know I'm an old bat, having graduated from college in 19mumblemumble. I have seen just about all of it and done most of it, including plenty of alcoholics in every stage, from the stupid-ass teenager on his first ill-advised beer binge to the terminal yellow woman bleeding out of everything like she had Ebola.

But I never, never came close to appreciating the experience of living with an alcoholic until this past year, when a friend's adult son came to school in our area and stayed at our house on weekends to get out of the dorm. We knew ahead of time that he had had "a problem" and had been in rehab, had once been given the choice of rehab or jail, had lost his licenses, and had stolen from his family to drink. HIs mother divorced his father for alcoholism; there were others in that family. All behind him, they all said, he's decided to turn his life around. We welcomed him with open arms and eyes, knowing part of our "job" was to support his sobriety; he was happy to be with us, helped us with some big projects that were more than we could do ourselves, we treated him as one of our own kids, which is to say, pretty well, and life was good.

Until it wasn't.

Skipping all the gory details, we gave him the ultimatum of "one more time and you're gone, you go to AA q week or you're gone, you're here every night or you're gone," and he sat in my kitchen and wept and apologized and begged for forgiveness over and over, and did the AA twice a week down the street from our house. Until he didn't.

The worst thing about it was after we threw him out (still stinking drunk at 1pm after the night before, when I found him at nearly midnight with stuff afire on the stove and broken crockery on the floor) -- the incredibly vile emails and texts and phone calls, the vicious lies he told to everyone about us to our friends and family...and to his family, whose friendship we had treasured. We had many sleepless nights; it would start over again when we discovered yet another something missing that we knew he had taken, or bottles in the deep grass behind the garden. He flunked out of school and stole and crashed a vehicle belonging to another friend. I knew about this stuff happening intellectually for years and years, but the experience in my own house, the breach of trust, was truly shattering.

So do I have sympathy, do I know it's a disease, do I know his brain was irrevocably altered and he couldn't really help it? Yep. Do I care? Nope.

Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

I care.

I care because once upon a time, I was that guy.

I can certainly understand needing to protect yourself and your family from such people. I can even understand being completely worn out by caring for someone like this.

What I can't understand is a nurse who gets on a message board to expose themselves as frustrated and essentially uncaring. I also cannot understand people who are, generally, well compensated for and used to dealing with all manner of disease sequelae lining up to agree with them.

Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Echo, I get what you're saying. I was thinking about it as I wrote what I wrote.

I am not without character flaws. God knows I have many.

But I am also of an age where I don't have a lot of illusions about who I am and what I am and how I will respond to things. I've had a broad and rich life experience up to this point, full of choices both bad and good. It is permissible for someone who is seasoned to say things about themselves which from the mouths of those in their twenties would sound ridiculous and full of hubris.

I do regret the comment that this makes me better.

+ Add a Comment