To heron - Thank you thank you thank you! I've been going nuts trying to remember it.
To DoGood - You remembered that episode spot on.
And we've all gone home with the keys. Oh, the feeling when you reach in your pocket and feel that bulge! You just want to crawl in a hole...
In a perfect world Major Mmargaret Houlihan would have more clones around today. In you had the sort of charge nurse, supervisor or DON you'd gladly follow to heck and back.
Besides being competent MH was fair but not a pushover. Like many a former military nurse one worked with and or met she expected 100% and knew how to get it out of you, even when you thought it couldn't be done. Those old school military nurses didn't suffer fools gladly. If they could get a corpsman or enlisted solider inline they had no problems with students or fresh new grads! *LOL*
Beauty of Major Houlihan wash she never forgot her nurses were also females, which on any given day meant dealing with a host of personal issues ranging from romance to substance abuse problems. While patient safety was always job number one, MH would try within the limits of her powers to help a nurse "in trouble"
When I first saw that episode on TV as a young teen cracked up because there actually was an old school nurse on our block that used third person when speaking to patients. Yes she worked on maternity and it was always "we", "mother", "baby", "father" this or that. We'd see her leaving for work on our way to school in crisp starched whites (always dresses) her cap case and girdled to within an inch of her life!
We used to say you weren't "real" nurse u til you went home with the keys! And how we would laugh when some new grad would comment that it would never happen to her, and the it did. Ah, the good ole days"
Never understood how someone could go home with the narc keys. I mean there was the security count at the end of previous shift and start of new when two nurses did the hand off and count. You'd think that once the count was done and cabinet locked one nurse would hand over the keys to her replacement.
Never understood how someone could go home with the narc keys. I mean there was the security count at the end of previous shift and start of new when two nurses did the hand off and count. You'd think that once the count was done and cabinet locked one nurse would hand over the keys to her replacement.
Simple. There was more than one set. If you had keys and didn't count, and was caught up in some last minute stuff, it was very easy to go home with them. It was a lot easier than you'd think.
Paragoric - now that's an oldie! And the old Coke syrup for upset tummies and whiskey on the gums for teething babies.
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Help! To all you grande dames out there. What was the name of a liquid med that we used to give for acute DTs/alcoholic withdrawal???
I just remember it smelling sooooo nasty (made me gag)! I used to pour it inside the old med closets we had back then because there was a circulating fan inside that could suck out the odor. What was it???
There was a TV episode on M*A*S*H where Col Potter orders it STAT for a nsg school friend of Margaret's who flips out on the chow line from her alcohol withdrawal.
To KCMnurse - Thank you, but never heard of hemineverin. Just looked it up. This ancient one learned a new drug today - learning never stops!
To all you newbies out there - See! We all keep on learning, too. So don't feel discouraged when you think 'how will you ever learn it all'. Thing is, you never do, which is a healthy thing. Just as long as you keep on looking for the answers!!!
We had 2 sets of narc keys (large floor), and anyone might have them. We'd go around asking "who has the keys?", since they were small everyone denied it because they'd get lost in those cavernous pockets in the white uniforms.
I made brightly colored neck lanyards, so no one could deny having them anymore.........
and went one night to a favorite watering hole of hospital staff at 2330, where the evening shift supervisor looked at me and said "narcotic keys?" with a smile. Looked down, and oops! there they were! Immediate about face and rush back to the hospital.
It was such an awful feeling to get home, start to get undressed, and run across those danged keys in a pocket! The first hospital I worked in had the old narc drawer. Counts were done at every shift. And no matter how far away you lived (and boy, did I live a long way away), if you took them home you HAD to take them back, because no one was getting pain meds until the keys reappeared.
It was such an awful feeling to get home, start to get undressed, and run across those danged keys in a pocket! The first hospital I worked in had the old narc drawer. Counts were done at every shift. And no matter how far away you lived (and boy, did I live a long way away), if you took them home you HAD to take them back, because no one was getting pain meds until the keys reappeared.
I was about to ask why one of the nurses didn't just call you on your cell phone while you were driving home when they realized the keys were missing...... and then it dawned on me what a dumb question that was.
I was about to ask why one of the nurses didn't just call you on your cell phone while you were driving home when they realized the keys were missing...... and then it dawned on me what a dumb question that was.
Amazing isn't it?
Back in the 1980's "cell phones" as such were huge big clunky black brick sort of things that really no one had, indeed think CB radios were more common. Now you cannot get away from the things.
In the interim you had pagers, then pagers that displayed text messages, but again those were still far from common.
I had the pleasure of meeting an elderly retired nurse in the late '90s. She was in her late 90s at the time. She told of buying 3 brand new uniforms for her new job, and being promptly reprimanded because her ankles showed! She was forced to let out the hem, and then put false hems on, to cover her scandalous ankles!
meanmaryjean, DNP, RN
7,899 Posts
Oh geez- I can smell it now.....