Even though I'm not a nurse yet I always perve on people's veins!! I carry hand sanitiser with me EVERYWHERE. Places I have fallen asleep are bolt upright at the library, curled up on the tiled kitchen floor (it was hot and the floor was cold), upside down and on a show ride.
I also tend to document and do a mini handover when I'm sick ( I still live at home with mum) so if mum isn't awake but I am I'll go into her and tell her something like this:
I have answered the phone at home "This is Gina, can I help you?"..especially if I see "Wise ICU" on the caller ID. It triggers something. Otherwise..I have woke up listening for call bells thinking I have fallen asleep on the job(my personal biggest fear-never done it-never want to), I have signed checks and permission slips and report cards with my work signature. I have tried to log i at work using my ID from home or my pw from my home email. I have knocked on doors in my own home while I was the only one home. I have (inadvertently) taught my kids to diagnose and treat certain illnesses and conditions. The teacher at school asked my 9 year old about hypothyroidism...and she told her(but she IS hypothyroid) My kids treat wounds and handle trauma cases on the playground. No one in my house gets squeamish at the sign of blood, though, I am the only one who can observe poop and finish swallowing what I was eating.
You realize...we don't work as nurses....we become nurses. That's who we are and it is deeply ingrained in us. Consider also, though, there is some reason we sought this. There is some part of us that needed this to fulfill who we were to be. For some of us, it was a child or parent who needed medical care, and we thought, "I want to do that" or "I can do that". For some, it was a family member who did this, and that person was an inspiration to us, and we wanted to be like them. For some, it was an ideal. A distant faint image of who we believed we wanted to be int his world. For some, it was simply providence. We are all here doing this for a reason.
Don't let the bad days get to you...you were put here to do even the bad days. It HAD to be you.
You have hit the nail right on the head! I loved this!!!!!
I used to work overnight phone triage for hospice, returning calls after families had called the answering service. Not knowing who would pick up, I would call and say, "Hello, this is the nurse, how can I help you?" On the rare occasion when I had dialed or been given the wrong number, I was inadventently making the most weird 3 am crank calls to people not enrolled in our program!
I will occasionally put LPN after my name on non nursing paperwork out of habit. I knock on every door when I'm tired (one morning i was really tired and knocked in the closet door and waited for someone to say come in) and have answered my cell phone at home and off duty with "A station this is Jay, how can I help you?"
Rhi007
300 Posts
Even though I'm not a nurse yet I always perve on people's veins!! I carry hand sanitiser with me EVERYWHERE. Places I have fallen asleep are bolt upright at the library, curled up on the tiled kitchen floor (it was hot and the floor was cold), upside down and on a show ride.
I also tend to document and do a mini handover when I'm sick ( I still live at home with mum) so if mum isn't awake but I am I'll go into her and tell her something like this:
At 0200 I had 2x panadol and 2x neurofen
Temp: afebrile
HR: 70bpm
Resp: 15
Clear fluids PO