Crusty Old Bats

[Been there,done that]

Share your ancient memories. One of mine is Kardexes.  We used them in report.  Updated them with pencil and eraser ! 

[Been there,done that, ASN, RN]

bumblebeehive said:

Ahhh.... kardexes! What messes!

Somebody else remembers kardexes! I used to smoke  while  updated them.

[GrumpyRN, NP]

Drinks trolley for the patients. Taking it round at night and asking if they wanted a whisky or a beer. Usually given a choice, painkillers or alcohol? You do not get both. We would tell the patients that Stout was good for them because it was full of iron.

Giving patients an extra bit of their night time sleep medication so that they did not disturb the night staff. I was told to "use a shaky hand" when pouring it out.

 

[Been there,done that, ASN, RN]

GrumpyRN said:

Drinks trolley for the patients. Taking it round at night and asking if they wanted a whisky or a beer. Usually given a choice, painkillers or alcohol? You do not get both. We would tell the patients that Stout was good for them because it was full of iron.

Giving patients an extra bit of their night time sleep medication so that they did not disturb the night staff. I was told to "use a shaky hand" when pouring it out.

Wow. That's crusty. The only etoh I remember being served was an hs beer  ordered to prevent DT's. Had to get it served by pharmacy. It was Old Milwaukee. That was cruel.

[ponderingDNP]

1. Retrieving items from the supply closet and charging those items by removing the sticker and placing it on a blank page in a 3-ring binder containing the patients' room number.

2. Morphine being prescribed only for the terminally ill.

3. New mothers receiving a bottle of Welchs grape juice with the makeshift champagne bottle and two plastic champagne glasses.

4. Nurses getting relinquishing their seats to doctors.

5. Separate oral medication and IV fluid nurses.

6. All-white uniforms with white support hose, nursing caps, and polished shoes.

7. Male nurses could be counted on half a hand.

8. Male CNAs were non-certified orderlies who were only assigned to male patients.

9. Rooms with TVs were an extra charge.

10. Discharges had to be gone before 12 noon or be charged for another day.

I think I'll stop here with the nostalgia. I can go on and on and on and...OMG! I really am crusty. I can't stop talking.?

11. I forgot all about the medication trays that we preset with medications and labeled with those little time squares with just the room numbers on them for identification!

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

I remember the baby bus, Babies would stay in the nursery and every 4 hours they'd be rolled out to the postpartum floor on a large table with partitions for each baby. An hour later the nursery nurse would collect them and roll back to put them in their bassinets for a nap. No rooming in, no on demand feeding, those moms needed rest. This was back when moms stayed 5days or more after a Csection. You could hear that bus coming with crying infants all the way down the hall, and moms would perk up, or look sad, depending on how well they'd bonded. We held daily demos on infant care, like bathing, or car seats, and moms would attend. There was no VCR on the unit, though people had them at home the hospital wasn't what you'd call cutting edge technology wise.

I also remember when going to look at the babies in the nursery was a recreational activity for a hospital visit. If you had a friend admitted you'd swing by the nursery to see a little happiness. Now they are locked down.

IV pumps were brand new and they had a few in the ICU only. HUGE deal in 1989 to see a pump on the regular floor, but a patient was getting chemo, so they used a pump.

The linen chute...they had linen bags coming from the fifth floor and if you were on the second floor you had to listen for incoming  bags or you might lose an arm.

Medication cards, and doing med pass for the floor with trays. If a card got lost, you might not realize it til next shift when the incoming shift checked orders. If the tray got bumped, the whole thing took a tumble and ruined the shift. It was much nicer to have the med carts so you could bring what was in the med room with you to the patients.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

Working on an infectious disease unit before the arrival of disposable gloves. I remember having kids with diarrhea, or snot, and it was flying everywhere. We'd gown up to treat the kids, but there were no gloves until a child with HIV was admitted. Even then, the gloves were only in that one room. Handwashing was critical, but we had the lowest infection rate in the hospital, they sent the kids with immune deficiencies to our infectious disease unit to keep them well.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

One more.

I miss the Rolodexes that had numbers available from the dawn of time. You had extensions for unlisted government offices, doctors relatives and their side chicks, the maintenance number plus a few home numbers to try, and then Joe Plumber that helped us out Christmas Eve in a pinch. Any number that might be needed we added it. So much history and knowledge

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

canoehead said:

The linen chute...they had linen bags coming from the fifth floor and if you were on the second floor you had to listen for incoming  bags or you might lose an arm.

I remember the linen chute! Country Bumpking General finally sealed theirs off about 10 years ago when they did a massive add on and remodel. I forgot about that beloved feature. I, of course, was on the 2nd floor of 8 floors

[GrumpyRN, NP]

ponderingDNP said:

1. Retrieving items from the supply closet and charging those items by removing the sticker and placing it on a blank page in a 3-ring binder containing the patients' room number.

2. Morphine being prescribed only for the terminally ill.

3. New mothers receiving a bottle of Welchs grape juice with the makeshift champagne bottle and two plastic champagne glasses.

4. Nurses getting relinquishing their seats to doctors.

5. Separate oral medication and IV fluid nurses.

6. All-white uniforms with white support hose, nursing caps, and polished shoes.

7. Male nurses could be counted on half a hand.

8. Male CNAs were non-certified orderlies who were only assigned to male patients.

9. Rooms with TVs were an extra charge.

10. Discharges had to be gone before 12 noon or be charged for another day.

I think I'll stop here with the nostalgia. I can go on and on and on and...OMG! I really am crusty. I can't stop talking.?

11. I forgot all about the medication trays that we preset with medications and labeled with those little time squares with just the room numbers on them for identification!

Number 4; Oh yes, remember that, and the absolute expectation that the nurse would give their seat for the doctor.

Number 6; At least I didn't have to go quite as far but... White coat (short sleeved) with shirt and tie. Grey made to meausure trousers and black shoes.

Number 7; All the males knew each other because there wasn't that many of us.

Number 8; All male nurses only worked with male patients but it was not uncommon to get a phone call from a female ward - "do you have a male nurse on duty? If you do send him along to the female ward as we need to lift a heavy patient." This has lead to my neck and shoulder pain in later life.

 

[DavidFR, BSN, MSN, RN]

Been there,done that said:

Wow. That's crusty. The only etoh I remember being served was an hs beer  ordered to prevent DT's. Had to get it served by pharmacy. It was Old Milwaukee. That was cruel.

In the UK it was common for patients to be prescribed a Guinness in the evening on the grounds of it's high iron content. The reality is it was just a pleasant treat, especially for patients who were used to having a tipple in the evening. 

Many oncology wards, and some other wards, had the "alcohol round".  Whisky, brandy and sherry would be dipsensed by phamacy in standard brown pharamacy bottles as though they were medicines. Evidently the cheapest brands (yes, I did sample!) Never excessive and it did raise the morale of patients. Especially in oncology, hey, why not?

[DavidFR, BSN, MSN, RN]

I remember consultants being treated like Gods and the ward round being a major panic.

One ward in my training was an old fashioned open Nightingale ward - (for you in the US basically a long corridor with beds down either side, all patients visible and just curtains drawn round them when intimate care was going on). The Ward sister (head nurse) insisted that on consultant ward round day ALL the patients be washed and ready, sat up straight in bed regardless of medical condition, with immaculate hair and nails before the round started at 9am. This meant night staff starting some washes before they went off. Beds were all pumped up to the same height and all lockers, chairs and bed tables had to be in identical spots around the bed. The domestics had to have the place spotless. Having had to do a last tidy of the ward, we students then had to hide out of sight in the sluice. Having done the ward round sister then served tea and cakes (bought with her own money) to the doctors in the office while the rest of us pretended to look busy. In reality there was nothing left to do since all the work had been done in a mad rush before 9am, so we pathetically pretended to look at charts, plump up pillows etc. Total madness. 

[londonflo]

DavidFR said:

One ward in my training was an old fashioned open Nightingale ward - (for you in the US basically a long corridor with beds down either side, all patients visible

I didn't know the name of that bed set up. At the VA hospital in the 70s, there was a huge room with about 15-20 beds. The patients through were pretty ambulatory on that floor. As students we had to pass meds there. Some patients would be sitting on the side of another patient's bed to talk to the neighboring one. Scrupulous attention had to be called to checking wrist bands (then and now) to make sure you were giving the right patient their meds.