You Know You're an Old(er) Nurse If . . .

Nurses General Nursing

Published

You know you're an older nurse if:

1. You remember working with nurses who wore caps. :nurse:

2. You remember nurses (and doctors) sitting at the nurses station drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes while charting. :smokin:

3. You remember when charting was done (handwritten) in 3 different colors (black or blue for day shift, green for evening shifts, red for night shift).

4. You remember when IV fluids came only in glass bottles.

5. You remember when breast milk wasn't a biohazard. :redlight:

6. You remember when chest tube setups consisted of glass bottles, rubber stoppers, and tubing.

7. You remember when white polyester uniforms were the standard for nurses.

8. You remember when you'd have given your eye teeth for a comfortable pair of nursing shoes (we haven't always been able to wear athletic shoes).

9. You remember when the hospital's top nurse was the director of nursing and not the chief nursing officer.

10. You remember giving lots of IM shots for pre-ops and pain meds.

What else?

HollyVK (with patient care experience going back to 1972) :gandalf:

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
Yes,I remember all that. I did dialysis on a pt who had a machine at home and was told I could wear gloves if I wanted to!! The gloves were there but I didn't feel the need and didn't think I could work with gloves on. Of course,now I use gloves all the time. Also, I sometimes work with nurses who are younger than my granddaughter! AND one of the last times I recerted for CPR,the instructor brought half mannequins that we could put on a table to save our knees.

"Annie, Annie, are you ok?" LOL - to this day I will joke around with a friend or co-worker who is not making sense, who is sleep deprived or something goes over their head ... I'll shake them and say, "Annie, Annie, are you ok?"

Of course, only the nurses etc. will get the joke ... the rest of them look at me as if they're wondering if I'M ok... :monkeydance:

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
T-shirt for this thread-

Antique Nurse Tee

hee hee :)

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
"annie, annie, are you ok?" lol - to this day i will joke around with a friend or co-worker who is not making sense, who is sleep deprived or something goes over their head ... i'll shake them and say, "annie, annie, are you ok?"

of course, only the nurses etc. will get the joke ... the rest of them look at me as if they're wondering if i'm ok... :monkeydance:

when i lived in seattle, there was a woman in our church who had a propensity for fainting if the sermon went on too long. you know how church is -- people habitually sit in pretty much the same spot every sunday, and this woman was usually a pew or two ahead of us. dh and i (both nurses) have a fairly strict policy against getting involved when outside of work, so when this woman went down for the second or third time since we joined this church, we were staring at one another, each waiting for the other to do something. while we dilly-dallied, a nurse that we knew to work in another icu in our hospital jumped up, leapt over two pews to get to the woman, and started to shake her yelling "annie, annie are you ok?"

the woman's companion said "her name is florence." dh and i still laugh about that.

and by the way, florence was fine -- she'd just fainted again.

when i lived in seattle, there was a woman in our church who had a propensity for fainting if the sermon went on too long. you know how church is -- people habitually sit in pretty much the same spot every sunday, and this woman was usually a pew or two ahead of us. dh and i (both nurses) have a fairly strict policy against getting involved when outside of work, so when this woman went down for the second or third time since we joined this church, we were staring at one another, each waiting for the other to do something. while we dilly-dallied, a nurse that we knew to work in another icu in our hospital jumped up, leapt over two pews to get to the woman, and started to shake her yelling "annie, annie are you ok?"

the woman's companion said "her name is florence." dh and i still laugh about that.

and by the way, florence was fine -- she'd just fainted again.

rofl!!! :rotfl:

i laughed so hard i scared the cat! (not a nurse, yet, but i got the "annie" reference)

we must be members of the same church 'cause i swear 'florence' passes out every first sunday just as we are passing the grape juice!

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
rofl!!! :rotfl:

i laughed so hard i scared the cat! (not a nurse, yet, but i got the "annie" reference)

we must be members of the same church 'cause i swear 'florence' passes out every first sunday just as we are passing the grape juice!

i suspect florence kept the sermons shorter! hope your florence does the same.

Specializes in Alzheimer's, Geriatrics, Chem. Dep..
... a nurse that we knew to work in another icu in our hospital jumped up, leapt over two pews to get to the woman, and started to shake her yelling "annie, annie are you ok?"

the woman's companion said "her name is florence." dh and i still laugh about that.

and by the way, florence was fine -- she'd just fainted again.

what a riot! lol!

Specializes in Peds, GI, Home Health, Risk Mgmt.

Reuseable latex rubber tubing, like the narrow rubber tubing you sometime see these days used for tourniques.

What did they use for IV tubing before plastics?

I love these stories.

Specializes in disability.

You know you are old when you can remember the taste test for diabetes

Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

Even I'm not that old. Blech.....

Specializes in MR Peds, geris, psych, DON,ADON,SSD.
Don't forget the toe pleat! And the open end of the pillowcase faces away from the door. :D

i still make my bed at home with mitered corners and a toe pleat and pillowcase opening away from the door. OCD I KNOW!!!!!!!! LOL

*Remember colored uniforms at some hosps., denoting position? White for RN, light blue for CNA, yellow for housekeeping.

*After giving an IM, you'd poke it into the mattress for a minute til you were ready to recap it.

*Hyperemesis being treated with Thorazine drips to "snow" the Mom a few days til she was better.

*4 people to a room, and one bathroom! Or it was down the hall....ick.

*The old ancient fetal stethesope...like a band on the forehead with a hard straight tube and trumpet-shaped bell. The Dr. put it on, then stuck his forehead on the pregnant woman's abdomen. Hard to look dignified!:chuckle

*If a pt. was in isolation, we'd just wear a pt. gown backwards.

*The "astronaut" garb we had to wear for AIDS pts. followed by wshing your hands in dilute bleach after de-gowning!

*The nice heavy weight of a glass syringe and metal tubex as you threw it like a dart into a hip. I hated the lightweight carpujects and had to relearn how to spear it into someone.

**Navy blue Nurses' capes....my Mom had one! You saved for months to afford one then...the Depression.

This thread is a gas! :roll

Specializes in MedSurg.-Tele, Home health, LTC.
Treating pressure sore with egg white and oxygen.

:o

:eek: wow!

+ Add a Comment