What is all the stuff that nurses have to put up with

Nurses General Nursing

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I hear nurses have to put up with a lot of crap. What is all the crap nurses have to deal with other than falls and incident reports.

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Well lets see, where to begin? How about being physically attacked by patients, I have been hit, bitten, which led to a series of HIV tests, pinched, punched, hair pulled, almost knocked out when a patient clocked me with his cast, spit at, vomited on, **** on, peed on, and both have been thrown at me, had my belongings stolen, including my lunch out of staff fridge. Have had my uniforms ripped and my eyeglasses broken. Attempts by management to bully, yelled at by far too many people to mention, dealing with drunk and disorderly, mentally unstable family members, finding patients passed out with needles sticking out of them from where they had just shot up with stolen hospital supplies.

That's just skimming the surface.

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Specializes in Pedi.

Basically everything you can think of.

Getting hit, punched, bit, spit at, puked on, peed on, pooped on, poop thrown at you, etc.

Getting yelled at by doctors and by management.

Getting blamed for everyone else (most frequently pharmacy, doctors and the cafeteria in my experience) not doing their jobs.

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been cursed at, peed and pooped on, screamed at by physicians and managers, had belongings stolen in the nurses break room, had food thrown at me by patients, been spit at......

cried on, hugged, told I was born to do this by a patient's family, loved by my patients, smiled at.....these are the moments that make me love what I do :)

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wowwww now my questions is why do we allow this to happen?

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well im a nurses aide and I have put up with a lot of that dealing with feces and the urine. talked nasty too and been hit and it does not bother me a lot.

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Specializes in Pedi.

Here's a recent thread about this, OP:

https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/everything-our-responsibility-845196.html

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I ditto being blamed for everything. I guess its because we are on the front line. We are supposed to check everything and catch mistakes made by everyone else including doctors and pharmacy. Being a waitress was the one that annoyed me the most. Not so much for the patients but for the patients family. Looking for items that should be stocked and always looking for IVACS. Time wasted to say the least. Rounding logs and scripted introductions were the best. ;) Let us be nurses! But despite being hit, spit on, cursed at and all the other stuff that comes along with being a nurse, I LOVE being a nurse. There are moments I will never forget that have touched my heart and made it all worth it.

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I agree 100% we are in the front line and we are supposed to catch all the mistakes but why is it noone can cath ours??

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Everything is the nurses fault and no one has any problems letting you know its your fault.

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Not to mention running all day on your feet with hardly any time to document, pee or eat. MARYRN2009, yes, why do we do it? I didn't know what I was getting into, probably because I bought into the wonderful "make a difference for good pay" dream, maybe my preceptor was too busy to tell me the real deal while I just saw what I wanted to see, and my school wanted to keep my money and the industry wants more RN's in order to lower the wages. It really is seen as all the nurses fault when you find out how many responsibilities they place on you in order to lower the liability to the MD. I'm responsible for what the tech doesn't do right and what the dr may do wrong. Too much liability and stress. What will change this? Not sure except to take unionizing seriously and make change there if needed. I Love taking care of my patients but everything else seems to be ssssooooooo stressful. Not having the support WHEN i need it, too many patients in general with no time for them or to critically think and do at the same time. I work bedside hospital and want to get out. It is taking a toll on me mentally and physically. The RN's who seem to excel are those who don't really care and coast or are really good at hiding the stress.

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I agree I did not know either. Schools put it so perfect that when you get to the real world you get dissapointed it happened to me too. I understand exactly what you are going through, I know is very stressful. The only solution I see is getting out of it completly or getting more education.

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