What's your favorite/least favorite part of your job?

Nurses General Nursing

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What's your favorite part of your job? Least favorite? This is for everyone, doing all kinds of nursing! I would love to hear. :)

Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.

Least favorite - Removing jewelry from genital piercings on intubated/sedated patients before MRI. Usually by then they have been in the ICU for a few days and can be pretty ripe down there, especialy females. Some of these things require a degree in mechanical engineering to figure out how to remove them.

Specializes in Hem/Onc/BMT.
Cleaning up poop is your favorite thing? That is honestly creepy...

Why is that creepy? You get your patient all nice and clean, and comfy in fresh set of linens. Doesn't it give you the happy fuzzy feeling when you're done? :)

Specializes in Surgical, quality,management.

Best a resolving bowel obstruction. nothing like a good burst of flatus and a BA to make the patient feel better.

worst discovering a pt that has presented with abdo pain has an advanced pancreatic ancer that we cannot operate on.

O the joy of the emergency surgical ward

Specializes in Trauma, Critical Care.

Favorite: critical thinking, feeling like I made a difference, laughing with coworkers

Least fave: sad traumas:(

Favorite: the paycheck

Least favorite. USELESS PAPER WORK such as care plans and being held accountable( without any authority) for other people/departments not doing THIER job. (oops that is somehow my job also)

Specializes in ICU, PACU, OR.

Favorite things:

Educating patients and family members about procedures and what to expect in a manner they can relate to and show some understanding.

Mastering a clinical skill that I have found challenging

Building mentoring relationships with new nurses-hearing about their successes and staying involved with their progress over the years

Teams that work together (I remember them well because the right mix happens so infrequently)

Least favorite:

Always having to prove myself

Nurses who downgrade their importance in other people's lives who can't articulate why nursing is so important and vital

Watching the cycle of proven inefficiency being tried yet one more time instead of something new and innovative

Favorites: Codes!! (Trauma Junkie! It's not that I want anyone to get hurt, it's just that I want to be there when they do=)), especially when they wake up cussing, ha!; I love ECG's and the science behind treatments I give; disgruntled teen-aged patients who I can get to laugh; confused patients I can convince to "hang out" with me for the night when they're trying to walk out with a broken hip; Doctors who are cool and will talk to me; Talking about cool cases with my nursing buds (maintaining HIPPA, of course); My peoples (teamwork); And definitely: telling people I'm a nurse!

Least Favorites: New doctors who don't know you so they think it's okay to be rude with you (they learn quickly on my floor, if the experienced docs don't get to them first)

C-DIFF!!! Seriously, it's the worst. The patient is miserable, your tech is miserable, you're miserable. It's just miserable.

Traumas we can't save=( Especially the young 'uns. It's not good with anyone but when it's a kid who doesn't make it, it's just that much harder. I know death isn't the enemy and what not, but it still sucks when family sees you as some kind of miracle worker and the patient doesn't survive.

The charting system at my hospital. It sucks and limits the length of notes I can put on my assessments. How does that make sense? I should have enough space to write a book should I desire.

Favorite: getting to know the patients (in a clinic setting) and helping them; being their advocate at all times.

UNfavorite: calling insurance companies for pre-authorization, prior authorization, permission to pass gas - this kind of phone "nonsense" is not why I went to nursing school!!!!! UNfavorite #2: waiting and waiting and waiting on the phone to give a patient prescription to a pharmacy - answer the da_ned phone - stop the menu "nonsense!!"

Specializes in Emergency, Haematology/Oncology.

I saw a patient in ED this week that I had previously looked after when he was very, very sick- months afterwards. He is a haematology (AML) patient and his wife who had touched my heart. I looked after him when he was neutropenic, septic and crashed, and I had assumed I wouldn't see either of them again. He came in just the other night with belly pain and his wife's eyes lit up when I called her in from the waiting room. She said almost in tears, "it was you wasn't it?", I said "yes it was me", both of us were verging on tears and she gave me such a warm hug. It was a particularly emotional reunion, her husband was so sick the last time we met that he didn't really remember me but she certainly hadn't forgotten. She told me that she had thought of me often and I told her that it was the same for me. She kept saying, "you knew, you just knew what was going to happen", she was talking about me watching him like a hawk, refusing to let him go to the ward, arguing with the ICU docs...... To have this profound connection with such genuinely lovely people, and to know that I had helped, done something that this person hadn't forgotten, amazing. People take you home with them sometimes. I love that. MOST FAVOURITE.

LEAST FAVOURITE- Sputum, of any kind.

Specializes in Renal; NICU.

This response is for 'isitpossible':

Amazingly, it just never occurs to me to be sarcastic or snarky with anyone who asks me a question at work. Esp new nurses or new hires. It breaks my heart to hear of this, and I have been a nurse for over 30 yrs!

It's so unbelievable that this kind of $hitty treatment of others occurs in a place where healing is supposed to take place.

Get over yourselves!!!!!!!

Specializes in Renal; NICU.

see above post

Specializes in Renal; NICU.

Favorite: Sending a NICU baby home with loving people whom you hope will always be that loving.

Least Favorite: Sending a NICU baby home and knowing it's probably going to be on the news one day...soon...

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